BY SARA PICCINI

Photo courtesy of Jack Musick

Dr. Jack Musick (right) dissects a small Atlantic sturgeon as Sea Grant Commercial Fisheries Specialist Dr. Chris Hager (left) lends a helping hand.

SHARK S.O.S.

With his mustache, sandy hair and glasses, Jack Musick bears a passing resemblance to Matt Hooper, the marine biologist portrayed by Richard Dreyfuss in the movie Jaws.

So perhaps it's appropriate that Musick -- who will assume emeritus status next year as the College's Marshall Acuff Professor of Marine Science -- is a larger-than-life character in the eyes of students and colleagues.

"He's a Hemingway figure," says Paul Gerdes '77, curator of the 128,000-specimen fisheries collection that Musick was instrumental in building. "They don't make them like that anymore."

Like many students before him, R. Dean Grubbs Ph.D. '01 came to graduate school at the College of William and Mary specifically to study with Musick.

"One of the things that attracted me is Jack's diverse interests --he's as well known in herpetology as ichthyology, for instance. Nowadays biologists are really pigeonholed. Jack's a throwback to the days of Darwin and Cope and the other great 19th-century biologists.

"We're similar in how we view the world and how we view scientists. I hope to be a real naturalist like Jack."

Grubbs points to Musick's annual field trip, the "Roanoke Roundup" -- now in its 36th year -- as just one example of his wide-ranging interests. At the end of the spring semester, students travel to western Virginia to study fish evolution in Appalachian rivers and streams: Musick not only teaches but cooks all the meals. For many years, Musick also ran the sea turtle stranding program at VIMS before passing the baton to his student Katherine Mansfield Ph.D. '06.

Musick has trained more graduate students than any other faculty member at VIMS. He received the College's Thomas Ashley Graves Award for Sustained Excellence in Teaching in 1997 and the Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia in 2001.

As Paul Gerdes sees it, Musick is one of a kind, sui generis. "They can get someone to take his job when he retires," he says, "but not someone to replace him."

Sara Piccini is a freelance writer from Hampton, Va.