54 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES 



straggler from the north, its presence has been signalized on several occasions. 

 Two specimens, for example, were taken in the neighborhood of St. Andrews in 

 1915 (one caught in a weir and the other on a long line). It has also been reported 

 off Eastport, 80 miles off Cape Elizabeth, near Cape Ann, off Marblehead and 

 Nahant, in Massachusetts Bay, off Barnstable in Cape Cod Bay (where R. E. 

 Smith killed the fish noted above many years ago), at Provincetown, and in Cape 

 Cod Bay off the entrance to the Cape Cod Canal, where a large one between 10 

 and 11 feet long was taken by a trawler in April, 1924. Although the localities of 

 capture are so widely scattered, the total number of specimens definitely recorded 

 from the Gulf of Maine is not over a dozen. Of recent years this has certainly 

 been so rare a shark within the limits of the Gulf of Maine that one might fish a 

 lifetime without seeing it, but in old days, when right whales were still plentiful 

 and many of them were killed off the Massachusetts coast, it may well have been 

 more abundant — such, indeed, is the rumor — for in its northern home it is attracted 

 from afar to feed on whale, seal, and narwhal carcasses, from which it gets one of 

 its popular names. When there has been a big killing of narwhals, such as falls 

 to the lot of the Eskimo of Disko Bay at rare intervals, schools of these great 

 carrion eaters may linger in the vicinity for several years. 



Food. — This is one of the most sluggish of sharks, offering no resistance 

 whatever when hooked, entirely inoffensive 46 but extremely rapacious, biting on 

 anything in the way of meat, the more putrid and ill-smelling the better. Apart 

 from carrion, which can be available only at rare intervals, it feeds on fish and 

 seals. Cod, ling, and halibut have been found in its stomach, and an entire reindeer 

 has been found in one. The specimen from Cape Cod Bay, mentioned above, 

 contained half a dozen flounders and a large piece bitten out of the side of a seal. 

 It is also known to eat crabs. An old story has it that the Greenland shark attacks 

 live whales, but this is not confirmed by recent observation and is most improbable. 

 Although so sluggish, apparently it is able to catch live seals, for not only have 

 whole ones been found in its stomach, but when sharks gather seals soon become 

 very scarce. 



Habits. — The nurse is a bottom swimmer, seldom coming to the surface except 

 in pursuit of the scent of carrion, such as of a whale being cut up. In Icelandic 

 waters it comes up into water as shoal as 40 to 50 fathoms in winter, but in summer 

 descends to 200 or 300 fathoms, lying chiefly on the muddy or clay bottom of 

 troughs or folds in the sea bottom. In the Gulf of Maine, then, it would be more 

 apt to be found in the deep basin than near land. 



Breeding habits. — Nothing definite is known of its breeding habits.' Its close 

 relative, Somniosus brevipinna, of the Mediterranean, the coasts of Portugal, and of 

 Japan, has long been known to be viviparous, and the early belief was that this also 

 applies to the Greenland shark, Faber stating that its young are born in July and 

 August. However, no one has recently reported a fetus in a Greenland shark, 

 and the fact that females often contain great numbers of eggs (up to the size of 



w Tales to the effect that it attacks Greenlanders in their kyaks are apparently 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 about Iceland. 



