FISHES OF THE GULF OF MAINE 



19 



the early 1920's. And large ones, alone, have 

 been reported from North Carolina, southward. 

 The greatest recorded length is 10 feet 5 inches, 

 from southwestern Florida. And the sand shark 

 does not mature sexually until perhaps 7 feet long, 

 or more. A weight of 250 pounds is recorded for 

 one 8 feet 10 inches long, showing how much 

 lighter a fish this is, length for length, than various 

 other sharks. 



Color. — Light gray-brown above, darkest along 

 back, snout, and upper sides of pectorals, paling on 

 the sides to grayish white on lower surface; sides 

 of trunk rearward from pectorals variously marked 

 with roundish to oval spots, of which there may be 

 upwards of 100, varying in color from yellowish 

 brown to ocher yellow. The rear margins of the 

 fins are edged with black on some specimens, 

 but not on others. 



Habits and food. — Despite its trim appearance 

 and voracious appetite, this is a comparatively 

 sluggish shark, living mostly on bottom or close to 

 it; more active and taking a bait more freely at 

 night than by day. During its summer visits to 

 the New England coast it holds so close to the 

 coast that it has never been reported from Georges 

 Bank, or from the outer part of the Continental 

 Shelf. Most of those caught are from depths not 

 greater than 1 to 5 fathoms, occasionally perhaps 

 as deep as 10 fathoms, and many come right in to 

 tide line along the beaches. They may sometimes 

 be seen moving slowly to and fro at the surface, 

 over bars, with dorsal and caudal fins showing 

 above the water; and they sometimes enter the 

 mouths of rivers. They capture great numbers of 

 small fish, which are their chief diet, particularly 

 menhaden, dinners, mackerel, skates, silver hake, 

 flounders, alewives, butterfish, and south of Cape 

 Cod, scup, weakfish, and bonito. Sand sharks 

 have been seen surrounding and harrying schools of 

 bluefish ; they have even been known to attack nets 

 full of bluefish, which gives a measure of their 

 voracity. They also eat lobsters, crabs, and squid 



Breeding. — The eggs of the sand shark are 

 hatched within the parent and are retained there 

 until the resultant young are ready for independent 

 existence, but there is no placental connection 

 between mother and developing embryo. It has 

 recently been discovered that while a ripe female 

 contains a large number of eggs, only two embryos 

 develop as a rule, one in each oviduct; they are 

 nourished (at least largely) by swallowing the 



unfertilized eggs 30 with which the stomach of the 

 embyro becomes greatly distended. Females 

 with large embryos have so far been reported only 

 from Florida and from Louisiana, whereas others 

 taken near Woods Hole have contained eggs only, 

 making it likely that the small specimens that are 

 so common along southern New England have 

 come from a more southerly birthplace. 



General range. — Coastal waters on both sides of 

 the Atlantic; Maine to Florida and Brazil in the 

 west; Mediterranean, tropical West Africa, Ca- 

 naries, and Cape Verdes in the east; also South 

 Africa; represented in Argentine waters and in the 

 Indo-Pacific by close relatives. 



Occurrence in the Gulf of Maine. — The sand 

 shark is by far the most common of its tribe, next 

 to the smooth and spiny dogfishes, along southern 

 New England and at the westerly entrance to the 

 Gulf of Maine. It is plentiful at Woods Hole from 

 June to November, to be found anywhere in that 

 region in shoal waters, even coming up to the 

 wharves. At Nantucket, too, it is so abundant 

 that shark fishing, with the sand shark as the chief 

 objective, is a popular sport. The facts that a 

 catch of about 1,900 sharks by three boats on 

 Horseshoe Shoal, in Nantucket Sound, June to 

 September 1918, was mostly of this species, as 

 was another catch of 350 sharks, taken near Nan- 

 tucket in the early 1920's, illustrate their numbers 

 there. Scattered sand sharks are also caught along 

 the outer beaches of Cape Cod by surf anglers 

 (published records are for Monomoy, Chatham, 

 and Provincetown) and there are enough of them 

 along this stretch of beach in some summers (1951 

 was a case in point) for them to be a nuisance to 

 anglers casting for striped bass in the surf at night. 



In August 1947 we saw a large one at the surface 

 pursuing a striped bass, that was being hauled 

 aboard a fishing boat on a hand line, in the 

 eastern side of Cape Cod Bay, where fishermen 

 tell us that this is not an unusual happening. But 

 this appears to be the northern boundary to their 

 occurrence in any numbers, or with regularity. 

 True, they are recorded at Cohasset, on the south- 

 ern shore of Massachusetts Bay, where we caught 

 one about 4 feet long, years ago in Boston Bay, 

 and at Lynn, Mass. But so rarely does it stray 

 north of Cape Ann that it has been reported only 



M For an account of the embryos, see Springer, Copeia, 1948, No. 3, pp. 

 153-1 5fi. 



