16 Shark Against Man 



There was some truth in the story of the government's so-called 

 surrender. The federal government had indeed declared war on sharks. 

 A Coast Guard cutter had been dispatched to New Jersey to fight them. 

 A congressman, predictably from New Jersey, had risen in Congress 

 and asked for a $5,000 appropriation to launch a federal crusade against 

 the shark. 



And ultimately the strategy of the shark war was discussed at the 

 highest possible level. At a time when Presidential worries included 

 Pancho Villa's raids, a national election campaign, and possible U.S. 

 participation in the World War, the President's Cabinet actually placed 

 the subject of sharks on its agenda. After this Cabinet meeting. Secretary 

 of the Treasury McAdoo announced that the Coast Guard had been 

 ordered to do what it could, which eventually turned out to be nothing. 

 Secretary of Commerce William C. Redfield stated that his Bureau of 

 Fisheries had not yet discovered why the sharks had appeared. Later, 

 the Bureau of Fisheries officially warned bathers to stay in shallow water, 

 because there was no known way to get rid of sharks. 



But already, as unexpectedly and as unpredictably as they had ap- 

 peared, the sharks had disappeared and become, once more, merely shad- 

 ows in the sea. 



Why? 



Why was the New Jersey coast the fateful rendezvous for four deaths 

 by shark bite? Why had five shark attacks occurred in 12 days in an 

 area where none had occurred before? 



Why? (And why is the New Jersey coast still one of the most shark- 

 ridden coasts in the northern latitudes?) 



After the panic-mongers and the tale-spinners had left the stage, taking 

 with them their bizarre theories about shark attacks, the scientific experts 

 stepped forward to explain the 1916 attacks. The experts looked a bit 

 embarrassed. 



In April, 1916, three months before the attacks in New Jersey, Doc- 

 tors Nichols, Murphy and Lucas (the three shark experts) had collabo- 

 rated on an article on sharks in Long Island waters. Their paper, pub- 

 lished in the highly respected Brooklyn Museum Quarterly, all but dis- 

 missed the possibility of a shark attack on a "living man." 



"Probably few swimmers have actually met in him their fate," Nichols 

 and Murphy wrote, "but doubtless many a poor drowned sailor has there 

 found his final resting place." And, in a separate postscript, Lucas added 

 his voice of authority: 



"Cases of shark bite do now and then occur," Lucas conceded, "but 

 there is a great difference between being attacked by a shark and being 

 bitten by one, and the cases of shark bite are usually found to have been 

 due to someone incautiously approaching a shark impounded or tangled 



