520 Memoir Sears Foundation for Marine Research 



lengths have been published are one of 16V2 feet from the Grand Banks in 1934, one of 

 about 16 feet off Portland, Maine, in 1846, another of about 15 feet off Cape Cod in 1849, 

 a fourth of about that same size caught in an otter trawl north of Cape Ann in February 

 193 1. Perhaps 8 to 14 feet is a fair average for adults, few among the hundreds annually 

 caught around Iceland and Greenland exceeding this size. Females average larger than 

 males, the maximum among 120 specimens brought into Aberdeen, Scotland, being il 

 feet 3 inches for the latter, and 15 feet 6 inches for the former. The British specimen of 21 

 feet, mentioned above, is said to have weighed about 2,250 pounds; an ii-foot specimen 

 from the Gulf of Maine, which we inspected, weighed about 650 pounds; another, of 11 

 feet 6 inches, taken off Cape Ann in January 1939, weighed about 600 pounds; but one 

 of 12Y2 feet, found alive on the beach in the estuary of the River Seine many years ago, 

 was only between 300 and 400 pounds. Males of about six feet are still immature; smaller 

 ones of either sex are seldom caught, but there is one record of a free-swimming specimen 

 of only one foot six inches (445 mm.)." 



Developmental Stages. Adult females have been found repeatedly containing great 

 numbers of soft eggs without horny capsules, with up to as many as i Yo barrels of them 

 in large specimens, these eggs ranging in size up to that of a goose egg. This, combined 

 with the fact that none of the many examined have ever been found with embryos, supports 

 the general belief that this shark, unlike other squalids, is oviparous. If so, it seems likely 

 that the eggs are deposited on the bottom in mud, but eggs naturally laid have not been 

 found as yet.'° On the contrary, the Mediterranean Somniosus rostratus is ovoviviparous, 

 its embryos having been seen by several students. 



Habits. Eyewitnesses agree that this is one of the most sluggish of sharks, offer- 

 ing no resistance whatever when hooked or even when drawn up out of the water. An 

 observer of long experience writes that he had driven a boat hook into one larger than 

 himself as it lay basking at the surface and had drawn it easily onto the ice." In view of this 

 passivity it is somewhat astonishing that it is able to capture prey as active as herring, 

 halibut, salmon, and seals which are said to become very scarce when these sharks gather. 

 Experience in the Iceland and Greenland fisheries indicates that they usually lie close to 

 bottom in summer but often swim toward the surface for prey, even in the warm season, 

 and in the winter fishery through the ice of West Greenland they are often lured to the 

 surface by a light. 



The diet of the Greenland Shark includes a wide variety of fishes, both large and 

 small, such as skates, herring, salmon, capelin (Mallotus), rosefish (Sebastes), sculpin 

 (Myoxocephalus), lumpfish (Cyclopterus), saithe or American pollock {Pollachius 

 'i!irens),Ymg (Molva), cod, haddock, wolffish (Anarrhichas) , znd various flatfishes, among 

 them halibut (Hippoglossus) and the Greenland halibut (Reinhardtius). Seals are a 



19. Winther, Prod. Ichthyol. Dan. Mar., 1879: 59. 



20. For a summary of evidence on this subject, see Liitken (Vidensk. Medd. naturh. Foren. Kbh. [1S79], 'SSo: 56). 



21. Grenfell, Labrador, 1910: 351. 



