This story covers an interesting new discovery about the scales of shortfin mako sharks, a dangerous fast-swimming shark. The article is one of the newer installments of Sindya N. Bhanoo’s “Observatory” section; and as such, it is short and to the point. Like her other stories, this well-written piece has a solid lead that basically tells you all you need to know: “Amy Lang, an aerospace engineer from the University of Alabama, and colleagues found that flexible scales around the side of the shark allow it to swiftly change direction while maintaining a high speed.” Aside from a good lead, Bhanoo does well in efficiently communicating the details of the research, and she even gives a nod to its practical importance: “Dr. Lang is now trying to create models of the shark scales in her laboratory, with hopes of finding real-life applications…‘it could be used in the rotors of the helicopter blade, parts of a submarine or a torpedo.’”
But the lead as cited above is the second paragraph, not the first. The first paragraph contains the one minor blunder in the entire article: “The shortfin mako shark is one of the fastest sharks around, perhaps because of the variation in size and flexibility of the teethlike scales embedded in its skin.” The problems with this opening paragraph are that it doesn’t make the interesting find clear enough (that the sharks actually use these flexible scales to speed through the water), and that it belittles the importance/intrigue of the discovery by not focusing on it enough. The word “perhaps” makes the whole thing seem trivial and not worth the reader’s time. Perhaps the reader will just stop reading.
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