SHARKS 23 



It has, however, an enormous liver, which yields a large 

 quantity of oil, which can be used for tanning, for tempering 

 steel, and for other purposes. Individual sharks yield from 

 80 to 200 gallons of oil, with an average of 125 gallons, and 

 there is a record of 400 gallons from a single liver. At one time 

 there was a regular fishery for Basking Sharks off the coasts of 

 Norway, Scotland and Ireland, while it is said to have been 

 hunted to a somewhat lesser extent on the coast of Massa- 

 chusetts in America. The method of hunting was much the 

 same as that employed for Whales, individual sharks being 

 harpooned from a small boat. As the sharks tended to 

 become less abundant, probably as the result of their wholesale 

 slaughter, and as the commercial value of the oil gradually 

 declined, these fisheries slowly died out. 



The methods employed in hunting the Basking Shark on 

 the west coast ol Ireland were illustrated in an interesting and 

 picturesque manner in the film " Man of Aran ", which met 

 with such well-deserved success in recent years. 



Mr. Couch, writing in 1877, gives a detailed and vivid 

 account of the hunt : " The boat . . . approaches the 

 fish with a man in the bow ready to harpoon it ; the line 

 attached to the harpoon is 200 fathoms long, and is coiled up 

 in the bow ; a man stands by with a hatchet, ready to cut it, 

 should it get entangled or foul of anything in running out. 

 When the fish is struck, he will at the first dart carry out from 

 70 to 150 or 200 fathoms of line ; he makes this rush to the 

 bottom, where he rolls himself, and rubs his wound against 

 the ground to free himself from the harpoon. The fishermen 

 generally allow him an hour to tire himself before they begin 

 to haul upon the harpoon line ; they coil up the slack of it 

 again, ready for him to make another rush, and play him in 

 this way, sometimes for eight or nine hours, before they can get 

 him to come to the surface ; and when he does so they are ready 

 to strike him with two or three more harpoons ; and when these 

 are fixed in him, they are able to pull him alongside the vessel 

 with the harpoon lines ; they then stretch him fore and aft 

 along the vessel's side, and get a jowl rope round his head, and 

 the bight of a hawser round his tail ; they then give him two 

 deep cuts, one on each side of the tail with a hatchet. In his 

 agony and his efforts to get free, he works his tail so hard, that 



