40 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES 



Size. — This is one of the largest sharks, growing, it is said, to a length of 40 

 feet or even more. In the British Museum there are the jaws of a specimen 36 feet 

 long. In a shark as large as this the teeth are about 3 inches long. A white shark 

 12 feet 8 inches long, taken near Woods Hole, was estimated to weigh 1,000 

 pounds. 



Color. — Back slaty or leaden gray, shading gradually to the white of the under 

 parts. In the porbeagle the transition on the sides from dark back to pale belly 

 is more sudden. There is a black spot in the aimpit of the pectoral fin, but neigh- 

 boring parts of fin and body are white. Dorsal, pectoral, and caudal fins are 

 darkest at their rear margins, but the ventrals are darkest (olive) along the forward 

 edge, fading rearward to white. 



General range. — Cosmopolitan in tropical and warm-temperate seas, straying 

 northward at rare intervals as far as New England and casually to Banquereau 

 Bank off eastern Nova Scotia." It is apparently rare everywhere. 



Occurrence in the Gulf of Maine. — The only reliable Gulf of Maine records of 

 this ill-omened shark are of two small ones mentioned by Storer as taken by Massa- 

 chusetts fishermen between 1820 and 1850; one about 13 feet in length and weighing 

 about 1,500 pounds, killed at Provincetown in June, 184S, which he described 

 under the name C. atwoodi; another captured at Eastport, Me., in 1872; one 

 7 feet 2^2 inches long taken many years ago in Massachusetts Bay (figured by 

 Garman, Memoirs, Museum of Comparative Zoology of Harvard University, 

 Vol. XXXVI, 1913, pi. 5, figs. 5-9); and one 16 feet long, taken in a trap at East 

 Brewster, Mass., October 16, 1923, and identified by Doctor Garman. Captain 

 Atwood 28 also writes that he saw four caught in mackerel nets at Provincetown. 

 Several more (all rather small) have been taken at Woods Hole in the fish traps, and 

 one off South Amboy, N. J., on July 14, 1916. 



So seldom does this tropical shark stray to the Gulf of Maine that it would 

 deserve no more than the briefest mention were it not the only shark likely to 

 attack human beings. Being equipped as it is with a most terribly effective set 

 of cutting teeth, and strong and active, the white shark has borne an unsavory 

 reputation as a man-eater from the earliest times, and it was probably a small 

 "man-eater" — in fact, the specimen listed above from South Amboy — that was 

 responsible for the shark fatalities along the New Jersey beach in July, 1916 (p. 22). 

 Hence, so long as white sharks do occasionally wander within our limits the possi- 

 bility of similar attacks on bathers along beaches of Massachusetts is always open, 

 if exceedingly remote. So far as we can learn, however, there is no actual record 

 of a white shark wantonly attacking human beings in the Gulf (p. 22), but Captain 

 Atwood tells us of a case where a rather small one (apparently the 13-foot specimen 

 described by Storer) turned furiously on a boat but was eventually lanced to death 

 and brought into Provincetown. It is on record, also, that one about 13 feet long 

 attacked a fisherman in a dory on Banquereau Bank many years ago, leaving in 

 the sides of the boat fragments of its teeth, by means of which Doctor Garman 

 was able to identify the species to which the shark belonged. 29 



> ; Putnam. Bulletin, Essex Institute, vol. 6, 18T4, p. 72. Salem. 



" Quoted, by Ooode et al, 1884, p. 671. 



» Putnam. Bulletin, Esses Institute, vol. 0, 1874, p. 72. 



