42 BULLETIiSr OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES 



Size. — The basking shark grows to a length of at least 45 feet, perhaps larger. 

 Several specimens 28 to 35 feet in length have been recorded from the New England 

 coast, and stUl larger ones have been reported, but on doubtful evidence. 



Color. — This shark is grayish-brown, slaty, or nearly black above. The under 

 parts are usually described as white, but the Menemsha specimen recorded by 

 Allen " was of a lighter shade of slate below than above, and one 14 feet long 

 captured at West Hampton, Long Island, on June 29, 1915,-^ had the belly as 

 dark as the back, the only white being a patch underneath the snout in front of 

 the mouth. 



General range. — This enormous fish is usually said to be native to Arctic seas, 

 straying southward to Portugal on the one side of the Atlantic, to Virginia on the 

 other side, and to California in the North Pacific. It would, we tliink, be more accu- 

 rate to say that it roams the whole North Atlantic from latitude about 35° north 

 to Iceland and northern Norway, Smitt ^ having shown that it is not, strictly speak- 

 ing, an Arctic fish, and that the old tales of a tremendous whale-eating shark, on 

 which Fabricius based his statement that the basking shark occurs in Greenland 

 seas, were false. It is also plentiful enough off the coasts of Ecuador and Peru 

 in the South Pacific to support a considerable local fishery." 



Occurrence in the Gulf of Maine. — Of recent years the bone shark has been 

 seen but seldom in the Gulf of Maine, the list being as follows: One 28 feet long 

 was killed in Maine waters in 1828; one off Musquash Harbor in the Bay of Fundy 

 in August, 1851; one of 34 feet at Eastport in 1839; several ranging in length 

 from 25 to 35 feet, killed there in 1868 and 1870; a considerable number seen and 

 several secured off Cape Elizabeth in 1848 by a whaler cruising for humpback 

 whales; one of 35 to 38 feet harpooned but lost between Boston and Provincetown 

 in 1864; and one killed near Provincetown in 1835, another in 1836 or 1837, a third 

 in 1839, and a fourth in 1847. We do not find another definite record of the bone 

 shark in the Guff of Maine until October 8, 1908, when one 18 feet long (measured 

 by J. Henry Blake) was taken in a weir near Provincetown. Two more have been 

 killed there since — one a 22-foot fish on October 9, 1909, and the other of 29 feet 

 on June 8, 1913, both in the harbor. Mr. Blake also reported one of 31 feet (16 

 feet in girth) as taken at Long Point, near by, but the year is not recorded. A 

 small one of 12 to 14 feet was caught at Menemsha Bight on Marthas Vineyard 

 on August 16, 1916, and one of about 26 feet 6 inches * at the same locality on 

 June 24, 1920. The bone shark is so large a fish and so conspicuous, thanks to its 

 basking on the surface, that every specimen visiting the coastwise waters of the 

 Guff is almost certain to be seen sooner or later and to be harpooned. Hence it 

 is probably no commoner there than the meager record suggests. 



>» Bulletin, Boston Society of Natural History, No. 24, March, 1921, p. 5. 

 SI This specimen is described by Hussalcof (Copeia, Aug. 24, 1915, No. 21, pp. 25-27). 

 « Scandinarian Fishes, 1892, p. U46. 



" This fishery is described by Stevenscn (Report, U. S. Commissioner of Fisheries for 1902 (1904), p. 228). 

 ^' This specimen is now preserved, mounted, in the Boston Society of Natural History, and described by Allen (Bulletin^ 

 Boston Society of Natural History, No. 24, March, 1921, pp. 3-10), who collected the foregoing records. 



