Fishes of the Western North Atlantic 287 



It is not known whether there is a circumscribed breeding season or whether young 

 are produced at all times of the year, which seems more likely, this being a warm-water 

 species. Available information as to its young stages is summarized under Developmental 

 Stages (p. 286). 



Relation to Man. The Blue Shark is of no commercial value, nor has it been in the 

 past, but it takes a large bait readily, and a few are caught for sport by anglers." Our own 

 experience, often repeated, has been that a "Blue" puts up little resistance when hooked on 

 a heavy hand line until drawn in nearly to the ship's side, but then it threshes about vio- 

 lently as it is being hoisted aboard. But by anglers' accounts a large one hooked on rod and 

 reel may resist strongly, making long rushes for a considerable time. While most often 

 hooked on natural bait, it will sometimes take an artificial lure, as in the case of one five 

 feet long recently caught on a feather jig tipped with pork rind, oflF Boone Island, Maine. 

 In spite of its razor-sharp teeth the Blue Shark has always been held in contempt by whale- 

 men who are the most familiar with it. There is no well authenticated record of its attack- 

 ing swimmers, notwithstanding sailors' yarns to the contrary. 



Range. Cosmopolitan, in the tropical, subtropical and warm-temperate belts of all the 

 oceans (including the Mediterranean). 



Occurrence in the Atlantic. This is no doubt the most plentiful of the larger oceanic 

 sharks of the Atlantic''" and it is the one with which we are the most familiar} around it 

 most of the sailors' superstitions about sharks have centered. In the eastern side of the 

 Atlantic it has been reported for so many localities and has been described so often as com- 

 mon that there is adequate evidence that it is practically universal off the coasts of west 

 tropical Africa (Senegambia, Morocco), around the off-lying island groups (Cape Verdes, 

 Canaries, Azores), and throughout the Mediterranean. It is also common, at least in 

 summer, offshore along the Atlantic coasts of the Iberian Peninsula and France, although 

 not often coming close to land. During the warm months it appears regularly off the 

 south and west coasts of England north to Scotland in numbers sufficient for fishermen 

 to be familiar with it, although it is seen less often on the French coast of the Channel, 

 where we find only two records, both for Cherbourg. It penetrates the North Sea eastward 

 to the Skagerrak, occasionally entering the western Baltic, and stray specimens are met with 

 as far north as the Orkneys and southern Norway. Southward, in the eastern Atlantic, it is 

 recorded for the west coast of South Africa. 



Old time reports by sperm whalers, who were very familiar with the Blue Shark 

 for reasons given above, show that it is generally, although very irregularly, distributed 

 over the midbelt of the Atlantic. Its latitudinal range is as wide in the western side as it is 

 in the eastern, i.e., from the offing of the Rio de La Plata in the south to Nova Scotian 

 waters (regularly) and to the Banks of Newfoundland (occasionally) in the north. Its 



19. For readable accounts of rod and line fishing for Blue Sharks, see Wise (Tigers of the Sea, 1937: 67) and 

 Holcombe (Modern Sea Angling, 1921: 152). 



20. Recent authors (Nichols and Murphy, Brooklyn Mus. Sci. Bull., 3 [i], 1916: 10) write of seeing "hundreds, 

 even thousands" of them during a sperm-whaling voyage in the tropical Atlantic 



