Chris Lowe, director of Cal State Long Beach's Shark Lab, knows how to make a shark snooze.

Assuming you can safely grab one, just hold the shark horizontally with its belly up and, thanks to a neural response, it will doze off in just 15 to 20 seconds.

Though he doesn't recommend trying it while wading or on your surfboard.

As part of the lab's research, Lowe and his graduate students regularly hook and bring sharks to the side of their boat, put the fish to sleep and insert a tracking device into the sharks through a small incision.

The tracking device allows Lowe and the lab's researchers to follow the shark's movement, depth and the water temperature giving scientists badly needed data about sharks' ecology and behavior.

The 37-year-old Shark Lab, which studies sting rays as well, is the premier research center on the West Coast. Government agencies such as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are full of Shark Lab graduates, demonstrating the program's wide impact.

"We've really kind of dominated in that area historically,' Lowe said.

Students at the lab tackle important questions, such as why sting rays are so concentrated along a section of Seal Beach, how old the rays get, and why female leopard sharks gather in shallow waters off Catalina Island.

Tracking devices are a key instrument for research, both for sharks and rays. (And, for those who are lucky enough to find a device washed to shore, a source of cash. A Redondo Beach couple won a $500 reward for finding one along Manhattan Beach earlier this year.)

There are several types of devices used.

One type, called acoustic monitoring, puts listening stations on the sea floor where scientists know sharks swim. When a shark passes nearby, the stations pick up the tracking device's ultrasonic pulses transmitting data such as water temperature, pressure and the shark's location.

A newer method uses satellite devices, such as one type that is attached to the fin or to a muscle. The tag pops off at a predetermined date and, once it reaches the surface, transmits temperature and depth readings, and, indirectly, the shark's location.

The lab aims not only to understand sharks but to assess which areas may need government protection.

In the case of the Catalina Island gathering site, scientists are studying whether female leopard sharks are seeking the warm water there to speed gestation. But researchers also know that if fishermen get wise to the location, the sharks could become easy prey in the shallow waters.

Safeguarding sharks, which have few young during their lifespan, has become even more important after a well-publicized shark attack this year in which a woman died south of San Luis Obispo.

In the early 90s, a similar attack occurred in Hawaii, prompting officials there to push for a "shark control' program that would have killed large numbers of big sharks.

Lowe and others protested the idea, saying that such tactics don't work. Targeting the site of an attack for a control program makes little sense, because a shark likely doesn't stay at one beach. Rather, a shark could travel the entire, 1,500-mile length of the Hawaiian archipelago.

Thanks to Lowe's efforts, Hawaiian legislators scrapped the proposal, but he fears that the recent attack will spur more such efforts.

The lone "Jaws' shark is a myth, Lowe says.

"If a white shark was fixated on eating people, it could do it at any time,' he said.

For Lowe, sharks are fascinating, enduring organisms that have changed very little over their 400- million-year history.

"You have a really well-designed organism,' Lowe said. "And I guess, based on their behavior, they never cease to amaze me.'