154 Memoir Sears Foundation for Marine Research 



20 pounds sterling." Their oil and sluggish nature made the Basking Shark the object of 

 intermittent small-boat fisheries with harpoon wherever and whenever they appeared in 

 any numbers, especially in Irish and Norwegian waters and around Iceland. Similarly, the 

 Pacific Basking Shark has supported, and probably still does, a local fishery of small boats, 

 each manned by six or eight men, off the coasts of Peru and Ecuador. Also, considerable 

 numbers are landed in California, where they are utilized for oil and fish meal. 



The larger whaling vessels also pursued them in earlier days whenever encoun- 

 tered; for an instance of this in the Gulf of Maine, see p, 155. But it is now more than 100 

 years since Basking Sharks have been plentiful enough on the western side of the North 

 Atlantic for more than incidental capture. With its large yield one might wish that the liver 

 oil of the Basking Shark had a high vitamin content, but this appears not to be the case. 



Range. Once thought to be an Arctic species, and often so characterized, the Basking 

 Shark is now known to be an inhabitant of temperate and boreal waters. In the North 

 Atlantic its range is bounded on the north by a line extending from the eastern side of the 

 Gulf of Maine and Newfoundland to the western and southern coasts of Iceland, the 

 Orkneys, the Faroes and northward along western Norway to the North Cape, with 

 occasional reports of it from the Murman Coast. In general, this line marks the zone of 

 transition from the region of influence of Atlantic waters to those of Arctic waters." 



To the southward in the eastern side of the Atlantic it is reported occasionally from 

 the English Channel and the North Sea as far as the Skagerrak and Kattegat (never from 

 the Baltic) , along the coasts of France and the Iberian Peninsula, from Madeira, Morocco 

 and the Mediterranean. On the western side it is reported as far as North Carolina. At 

 present its chief centers of abundance appear to be west and south of Iceland, along western 

 Ireland, among the Orkneys, and off southwestern Norway. There is no evidence that it 

 occurs at all in the tropical Atlantic. However, it is represented on both sides of the South 

 Atlantic off South Africa, Argentina and the Falkland Islands, in the South Pacific off 

 Peru and Ecuador, off southern Australia and New Zealand, and in the northern Pacific 

 from California to British Columbia as well as in Japanese and Chinese waters, by a form 

 (or forms) whose precise relationship to the Basking Shark of the North Atlantic is still 

 to be determined (p. 147). 



Occurrence in the Western Atlantic. There is no reason to suppose that the Basking 

 Shark ever occurred, other than as a stray, north of about 44° to 45° N. in the western 

 North Atlantic, there being only four positive records of it from the southern part of 

 Newfoundland: one from the outer coast of Nova Scotia, three from the Bay of Fundy 

 and a few from the vicinity of Eastport, Maine, at the mouth of that bay. In colonial 

 days the southern and western parts of the Gulf of Maine appear to have supported a con- 

 siderable population of them, however, for by old reports many were taken in Massachu- 



31. Pennant, Brit. Zool., 5, 1776: 174. An estimate of 80 pounds sterling (Day, Fish. Gt. Brit., 2, 1880-188+: 

 306) seems too high. 



32. There is no recent report of it for any Arctic locality; nor does Jensen (Mindskrif. Japetus Steenstrup, 2 [3], 

 1 9 14.) include it in his survey of the sharks of Greenland. 



