2 o Memoir Sears Foundation for Marine Research 



whales have no basis. ^^ Neither do we place any credence in reports that they customarily 

 cut out and devour chunks of flesh from large fishes. 



However, a large Sawfish does have a powerful weapon of defense — and potentially 

 of offense — at its disposal in its saw, for it can strike sideways with the latter with great 

 power, either in the water, as when being hauled alongside a boat, or on land if drawn 

 up on shore. Consequently, even small ones should be handled or approached with 

 caution, as every fisherman knows who is familiar with them. Since they may strike 

 in the same way when lying on the bottom if disturbed, stories of injuries inflicted by 

 them on fishermen or on bathers, or even of fatalities, cannot be brushed aside as 

 imaginary.^i But we know of no evidence of an unprovoked attack upon a bather in 

 any part of the world by a Sawfish that had not been disturbed in some way. 



Relation to Man. Sawfish flesh is coarse and, so far as we can learn, no regular 

 use is made of it along the western coasts of the Atlantic except that one is occasionally 

 exposed for sale in some tropical fish market. Indeed, it has been listed as poisonous 

 in Cuba.52 But small ones of three feet or so are described as "delicious as a breakfast 

 pan fish. "^3 And we read that in India "the flesh is equally esteemed with that of sharks. 

 The fins are prepared and sent to China; the oil is extracted from their livers, whilst 

 the skins are useful for sword scabbards or for smoothing down wood."^* Sawfish saws 

 are often offered for sale as curios in tropical ports, and they are still employed in 

 religious ceremonies by the Australian natives. The skin is used to some extent for 

 leather. But no attempt seems to have been made to obtain their skins or oil on a 

 large scale, though a considerable yield of the latter per fish might be expected, 

 judging from a recorded weight of 102^/4 pounds for a single liver (length of fish not 

 recorded).^* 



Sawfishes are too sluggish to be held in any regard as game fish by anglers. But 

 they take cut fish-bait rather readily if they detect it (no doubt by scent). Once hooked 

 they swim so powerfully, though slowly, and are so enduring, that the capture of a 

 large one entails a long and often wearisome struggle. Also, it is not unusual for a 

 Sawfish to leap clear of the water under such circumstances, as happened on one occasion 

 when it required more than two hours for one of us to subdue a 14-foot Sawfish on 

 a handline from a small boat. 



Range. Tropical to subtropical coastlines, estuaries, and river mouths of all three 

 great oceans, running up to fresh water in many localities. In the western Atlantic 

 Ocean Sawfishes range northward regularly to the West Indies and Florida, seasonally 



50. According to Lacep^de (Hist. Nat. Poiss., 4° Edit., in Buffon, Hist. Nat., J, 1798: 292), there was in the Paris Museum 

 part of a Sawfish saw that was said to have been taken from the side of a Whale. But there is no way of verifying 

 this supposed origin. 



51. A report received by Day (Fish. India, 1878: 728) of a bather in India being cut in two by a large one is not beyond 

 the bounds of credence. 



52. Hoffman, Rev. chil. Hist. Nat., 33, 1929: 29. 



53. Breder, Field Bk. Mar. Fish. Atlant. Coast, 1929: 28. 54. Day, Fish. India, 1878: 729. 



55. See Hooper (Mem. Indian Mus., 2, 1909: 59-60), who also gives chemical analyses of the oil of Indian Sawfishes, 

 mixed, however, with that of Sting Rays and Sharks; see Marcelet (Bull. Inst, oceanogr. Monaco, 817, 1942: 6) 

 for analysis of liver oil from a Madagascar specimen. 



