Published monthly by The Agassiz Association, ArcAdiA; Sound Beach, Connecticut, 



Subscription, $1.00 a year Single copy, 10 cents 



Entered as Second-Class Matter June 12, 1909, at Sound Beach Post Office, under Act of March 3, 1897. 



Vol 



VIII 



MAY, 1916 



Number 12 



War on the Wolves of the Sea. 



BY AMANDA SMITH GRAIN, SOUND BE;ACH, 

 CONNECTICUT. 



A new war — a war on "The Wolves 

 of the Sea," namely, the shark and all 

 its family, who are the living subma- 

 rines waging an old and ceaseless war 

 on the food fish, which at this particu- 

 lar time have become a vital asset to 

 the table of the land and our economic 

 conditions. From Maine comes the be- 

 lief that the rapid depletion of our food 

 fish is due to the shark and dog fish, 

 and not to the loss of the frye by their 

 unaccustomed deep of the sea. 



James J. Condon of the United Ang- 

 lers League, along with C. A Davis, 

 Chairman of the Maine State Fish 

 Commission are among the leading 

 spirits in the movement to fight these 

 destroyers of our food fish, which in- 

 clude almost all of the shark family, 

 particularly the variety commonly 

 called the "dog" fish, which variety 

 must not, however, be confounded with 

 the fresh-water dog fish found in in- 

 land waters. The dog fish is known to 

 every salt-water angler and net-fisher- 

 man. A great deal has been written, 

 also considerable legislation enacted, 

 to control the netting of menhaden or 

 what are best known as bony fish, by 

 the use of large and finely equipped 

 steamers, with the idea that these steam- 

 ers using the immense purse nets, also 



take large quantities of eatable fish, 

 which of course, went in with the catch 

 of menhaden to the fertilizer works. 

 These wasted food fish are, how^ever, 

 adult fish and small in numbers, while 

 the dog fish is capable of destroying 

 the small fish by the thousands, and it 

 is safe to assume that a three foot dog 

 fish will consume in the season more 

 small fish than all the eatable fish net- 

 ted by the largest fishing steamer in 

 the same time. 



The entire shark family have borne 

 the reputation of being what is com- 

 monly called "man eaters" and in most 

 minds the food of the w^olves of the 

 sea is hardly associated with our num- 

 erous small food fish, such as mackerel, 

 herring, blue fish, etc., nevertheless it 

 is just these that provide the greater 

 part of the shark family with their sub- 

 stance. 



The white shark or man eater is the 

 best known and with the blue shark 

 attain a length of twenty feet and 

 strange as it may seem, these two are 

 exceedingly destructive to food fish, 

 following the schools of food fish, even 

 into the nets of the fisherman, where 

 they do, at times, a great deal of dam- 

 age. The dusky shark closely related 

 to the former is the most common of 

 the larger sharks on our coast. 



Apart from the small and most com- 

 mon variety, the dog fish is the small 



Copvn'Kht 1916 bv The Agassiz Association, ArcAdiA: Sound Beach, Conn. 



