A key early work that draws on Hawks's lifelong fascination with the codes of professionalism and the emotional bonds between men, Tiger Shark features Edward G. Robinson as Mike Mascerena, the self-professed "best fisherman of the Pacific." Mike develops an Ahab-like obsession with sharks after losing his left hand to one and becomes a marked man in the Hawksian cosmology because of this physical and psychic disability. Complicating his life is a romantic relationship with the daughter of a fisherman who had perished in a shark attack, a girl also pursued by his best friend and fishing partner (Richard Arlen). Hawks inter-mixes vibrant, near-documentary sequences of deep-sea fishing with moody melodrama to create an action film with a complex moral vision.