Fishes of the Western North Atlantic 141 



it is considerably more plentiful among the West Indies than the paucity of the published 

 records would suggest; this is certainly true along the east coast of Florida, where one 

 correspondent (a well known student of sharks) reports the recent capture in the shark 

 fishery of about a dozen fair-sized ones." To the northward it is either more plentiful or at 

 least more often caught or reported. Thus, four were taken near Cape Lookout, North 

 Carolina, during the summer of 191 8, with others reported as seen in that and previous 

 summers; one is recorded off Smith Island, Virginia; three or four from the coast of 

 New Jersey, with others reported by sport fishermen.^^ Occasional specimens are encoun- 

 tered oif New York; a small one of about five feet was taken in a pound net at Sakonnet, 

 Rhode Island, May 30, 1939.'^ Nine or ten are definitely listed and several additional 

 ones are reported from the Woods Hole region and Nantucket, with two at the most, 

 however, in any one year. While it is generally considered a warm water species, reliable 

 reports of its presence have been received more often from the southwestern part of the 

 Gulf of Maine than from any other coastal sector of comparable length on the American 

 seaboard. In Massachusetts Bay alone at least nine were either actually captured or har- 

 pooned and lost during the period from 1935 to 1940, with stray specimens taken for 

 earlier years back to 1848, most of them in the vicinity of Cape Cod. Still farther north 

 there are scattered records for the vicinity of Portland, Maine (2),'* the most recent a 13- 

 foot specimen, taken in a gill net off Casco Bay in November 1931 ; from Eastport at the 

 mouth of the Bay of Fundy (i), and from Digby, Nova Scotia, within the Bay (i). It 

 may visit the outer coast of that Province more often than formerly supposed, there being 

 several reliable records for St. Margaret Bay, and perhaps for Halifax also. The most 

 northerly record for American waters is St. Pierre Bank, south of Newfoundland, where 

 one attacked a fisherman many years ago in a dory, leaving in the sides of the boat frag- 

 ments of its teeth, by means of which Dr. Garman was able to identify it." 



The fact that all records of its presence off the northeast coast of the United States 

 and Canada are for the warm half of the year suggests that it is an oceanic visitor, but 

 nothing whatever is known of its status offshore in the western Atlantic, there being no 

 record of its presence around Bermuda. 



Although typically an inhabitant of the high seas, it frequently comes inshore and 

 even into very shallow water, as in the following cases: one taken inside Sandy Hook Bay, 

 New York, in 19 16; a considerable number that have been picked up at different times 

 in the fish traps within a few yards of the beach in the vicinity of Woods Hole and on Cape 

 Cod; one harpooned in 10 feet of water in Provincetown Harbor many years ago; two 

 specimens caught close to Boston Harbor in 1 839; one harpooned about two miles off one 

 of the most popular bathing beaches at the mouth of Boston Harbor in 1937; another simi- 



31. Personal communication from Stewart Springer. 



31. A recently received photograph, supposedly of a Mako taken off New Jersey in October 1935, unmistakably 



represents a Carcliaroion of 11 to 12 feet. 

 33. Photograph received from James Miller. 34. Received from Walter H. Rich. 



35. Putnam, Bull. Es^ex Inst., d, 1874: 72. 



