54 



FISHERY BULLETIN OF THE FISH AND "WILDLIFE SERVICE 



Figure 21. — Greenland shark (Somniosus microcephalus) , 

 female, about 5 feet 9 inches long. Teeth at center of 

 mouth; lower teeth from midway along the jaw of a speci- 

 men about 11 feet long from the Gulf of Maine, about 

 1.8 times natural size. From Bigelow and Schroeder. 

 Drawings by E. N. Fischer. 



tions of its dorsal and anal fins, in its general form, 

 and in its teeth, it is easily separable from the 

 "Portuguese," both by lacking any trace of spines 

 in its dorsal fins, by its thorn-like and loosely 

 spaced dermal denticles, and by its more lunate 

 tail. It also grows much larger than the Portu- 

 guese shark. We need only note, further, that 

 while its upper teeth are narrow and awl-like, its 

 lowers are broad, squarish, forming a nearly 

 continuous cutting edge, with the single cusp 

 directed sharply outward ; that its gill openings are 

 short and located low down on the sides of the 

 neck; that its eyes are very small; and that it is 

 stout shouldered, with blunt rounded snout, as 

 Scoresby pictured it more than a century ago. 43 



Color. — Blackish, coffee brown, or ashy-, pur- 

 plish-, or slate gray, below as well as above; 

 changing to bluish gray if the epidermis is rubbed 

 off, as is apt to happen when one is caught; the 

 back and sides are marked with many indistinct 

 dark crossbars on some specimens. 



Size. — This is one of the larger sharks. It is 

 said to grow to a length of 24 feet, but 21 feet is the 

 largest of which we find definite record, 44 and 16- 

 to 18-footers are unusual. One of 16K feet was 

 reported from the Grand Banks in 1934; one of 



« Arctic Regions, 1820, vol. 2, pi. 15, figs. 3 and 4. 

 « Jenkins. Fishes British Isles, 1925, p. 325. 



16 feet off Portland, Maine, in 1846; one of about 

 15 feet off Cape Ann in 1849; and another of about 

 that same size was caught on a long line north of 

 Cape Ann in February 1931. Perhaps 8 to 14 feet 

 is a fair average for adults, that is not often ex- 

 ceeded among the hundreds caught annually off 

 West Greenland and around Iceland. The 21- 

 foot British specimen mentioned above was said 

 to weigh about 2,250 pounds; two Gulf of Maine 

 specimens, each about 1 1 feet long, weighed about 

 600 and 650 pounds, respectively. 



Habits. — Off Greenland, and along the Labrador 

 coast, the Greenland sharks tend to approach the 

 surface in winter, often coming right up to the ice. 

 But most of them withdraw in summer to 100 

 fathoms or deeper. And the few that visit our 

 Gulf appear to hold rather closely to the bottoms 

 of the deeper troughs, though a stray may come 

 so close to the shore now and then, and into water 

 so shoal as to blunder into a fish weir; one such 

 event is on record for Passamaquoddy Bay. 



This is one of the most sluggish of sharks, 

 offering no resistance whatever when hooked, and 

 it is entirely inoffensive to man. 45 But it is ex- 



'* Tales to the effect that it attacks Greenlanders in their kyaks are appar- 

 ently mythical, and Doctor Porsild, Director of the biological station at 

 Disko, said that the Eskimos do not fear it as they do the killer whale; nor 

 is there any authentic instance on record of a shark attacking a human being 

 near Iceland. 



