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Genie and Soliman, a local fisherman, pull in nets in the Red Sea, Egypt, 1951
Receiving a Fulbright Scholarship, Genie traveled to Egypt to work at the Ghardaqa Biological Station on the Red Sea. She conducted the first detailed study of Red Sea fishes undertaken in 70 years and completed the largest collection of these fishes ever made by a single person.
“The job still remains of assimilating the hundreds of pages of notes that I’ve brought back. It’s not the most exciting part in the life of an ichthyologist, but it is one of the most important. There is little point to traveling around the world and learning new things about fishes in far-off places, if you don’t make your findings available for the possible use of others.”
- Dr. Eugenie Clark, Lady with a Spear
Definition: Ichthyologist (ick-thee-olo-jist): A scientist who studies fish
While visiting tombs of Ancient Egyptian pharaohs, Genie was able to identify different varieties of fish in the hieroglyphics. In the drawings, she was able to discern the fish of the Nile River from fish of the Red Sea that Queen Hatshepsut’s expedition to “Punt” had documented - the same fish she had seen just days before.
From field notebook "Egypt, 1950-51, Fulbright"
Starting from that first visit, Genie became fascinated by the coral reefs of the Red Sea and all of the amazing fish that reside there. She advocated for the preservation of an area on the southern tip of the Sinai peninsula called Ras Mohammad, which later became Egypt’s first national park.
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