FISHES OF THE GULF OF MAINE 43 



Before the coming of the white man this great shark seems to have been a 

 regular inhabitant of the Gulf of Maine, which afforded it an excellent pasture, for 

 old tradition has it that large numbers were taken in Massachusetts waters for their 

 oil during the first half of the eighteenth century. However, the local stock 

 soon went the same way as the local stock of the North Atlantic right whale — into 

 the try pot — and this seems also to have been its fate in Norwegian waters, where it 

 was sufficiently abundant to support a regular fishery up until about 1820, since 

 which time it has been killed down to but a fraction of its former numbers. Indeed, 

 the basking shark to-day is something of a rarity off the coast of Norway, but in 

 other parts of the world, particularly in Icelandic waters, off Ireland, and off Peru, 

 as noted elsewhere (p. 42), it is still moderately plentiful. 



Habits. — This is a sluggish, perfectly inoffensive fish, helpless of attack so far 

 as its minute teeth are concerned, and spending much time sunning itself on the 

 surface of the water, often lying with its back awash, on its side, or even on its back, 

 and sometimes loafing along with the snout out of water. Hardly a writer men- 

 tioning this shark but tells us that two or three swimming tandem, with the 

 dorsal fins high in the air, are the basis for "sea-serpent" myths. At times bone 

 sharks are gregarious, traveling together in schools. Nothing whatever is known 

 of the breeding habits of the basking shark. 



Food. — Next to its vast bulk and its curiously sluggish habit, the most inter- 

 esting peculiarity of the basking shark is its diet, for it subsists wholly on minute 

 Crustacea, particularly on copepods, and on other tiny pelagic animals, which it sifts 

 out of the water by means of its greatly developed gill rakers, exactly as do such 

 plankton feeders as menhaden on the one hand and whalebone whales with their 

 baleen sieves on the other. 



Commercial importance. — Although the day of the bone shark in New England 

 waters is long past, probably never to return, it may be of interest to point out that 

 it has always been hunted whenever encountered by the sperm whalers from New 

 Bedford, and that it is still an object of pursuit off the coasts of Iceland and Ireland. 

 It was and is valued solely for its liver oil, individual fish as a rule yielding from 80 

 to 200 gallons (average about 125 gallons), with as much as 400 gallons from a single 

 liver not unheard of and a yield of 600 gallons reported. The basking-shark fishery 

 has always been carried on with harpoons, the shark being quite indifferent to the 

 approach of a boat though it swims actively and strongly when struck. Fat ones are 

 subdued more easily than lean ones. 



