Once upon a time, before my sharks were finned, we met at sunset . . .In Tahiti I watched the sharks, to learn what they are like as animals and individuals. Over the years, I was accepted into their community and documented much intelligent behavior during our meetings at sunset. When I got an Internet connection, I found that no one had ever done such a thing, and that most people thought that sharks were vicious. After my findings were presented at an International symposium on cognition, the BBC came to film my work for Shark Week. But by then the sharks were being finned for the shark fin soup racket, and to add insult to injury, my efforts to get their news out of the country were blocked by the media.So I wrote down their story, so that the world would find out what they were like, the strange and startling things that happened, and the terrible loss when the shark finning industry arrived in those innocent islands . . .