332 I N A G U A 



sight, banked in a long sweeping loop, twisting its whole body 

 as it did so, and then passed in front of me within fifteen feet. 

 As it went by I could see that the pulsing of its muscles, easily 

 visible, kept perfect time with the action of the fins. It was 

 delicately balanced. Once when it decided to veer slightly 

 to the left it merely altered the position of its long pectorals a 

 bare inch or two, bent the tail a little further and with hardly 

 an effort went sliding off in that direction. 



Once again it swam nearly out of vision, turned and was 

 swimmingr back when something alarmed it. I am not certain 

 what, perhaps a noise in the boat above, something it sensed, 

 or possibly it simply got an idea in its head. Unexpectedly it 

 put all its energy into motion and with tail lashing out with 

 tremendous power it shot by at incredible speed and hurtled 

 into obscurity. From a series of lazily curling arcs it became 

 in an instant an engine designed for speed, in a medium where 

 speed is acquired only by excellence of form and by perfect 

 co-ordination of nerve and muscle. 



It is little wonder that the sharks have succeeded in attaining 

 underwater perfection, for they have had longer to do it than 

 any other fishes. Sharks go back to the very beginning of things. 

 The fossils of their ancestors may be found among the rocks 

 of the Paleozoic. It seems a far cry from a flyingfish with its 

 long multi-rayed pectorals or a scarlet parrotfish munching on 

 reef vegetation to a carnivorous shark, yet there is evidence 

 that all our modern fishes are derived from a shark-like an- 

 cestor. 



Sharks, more than any other fish in the sea, fill me with a 

 sense of awe. When one considers that thev have maintained 

 themselves, almost unchanged, down through the misty flights 

 of the ages, undiminished and as vigorous as ever, one must 

 give them respect, if only grudgingly. Four hundred million 

 years is no mean record for any group of creatures. When one 



