THE IMPENETRABLE SEA 



shark-sucker {Echineis naucrates), which is usually found 

 fixed to sharks, although it may be found attached to a 

 few other species. It seems to be a completely worthless 

 fish, for it has no food value and yields no commercial 

 products. Yet men have found a use for it. 



When Columbus, the year after his first voyage of 

 discovery, returned to the Caribbean, he lingered among 

 the south coast islets, which he named "the Gardens of 

 the Queen" and watched the Indians using the remora 

 as a fishing device. They fastened cords to the tails of 

 remoras, threw them into the sea, and waited until they 

 attached themselves to larger fishes, which were then 

 hauled ashore. Columbus saw them haul in a huge 

 turtle, with the sucking-fish still clinging to it. 



The remora's peculiarity, making it in the words of 

 one authority the "hitch-hiker of the sea", is its dorsal 

 fin, which is at first like those of other fishes, but changes 

 during its lifetime into a complex sucker, shaped like the 

 sole of a shoe. This gives it a powerful hold on any object 

 or creature to which it attaches itself It hangs on to 

 larger fishes until a meal is reached, which it shares with 

 its host and then digests as it is carried along. If it feels 

 that its host (being replete) is not likely to provide it with 

 another meal for a while, it will detach itself and look 

 around for another fish in a hungrier condition. Yet it 

 does not seem to have any power of discrimination be- 

 tween living and dead things, and will fasten itself to the 

 hull of a ship as firmly as to a shark's belly. 



There are many old legends and historical accounts 

 which indicate that the ancients believed in the remora's 

 power of arresting and detaining ships in full sail through 

 their power of suction. Mark Antony's galley in the battle 

 of Actium was said to have been held fast by a group of 

 remoras, which defied the efforts of several hundred men 

 to free the vessel. Some old writers give the name 

 "reversus" to the sucker-fish, from the erroneous idea 

 that the creature swims upside-down. As it clings to a 



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