66 Man Against Shark 



They are still attacking what is left of the corpse, snapping scraps from it 

 and dashing after any piece which is torn away. 



We get another one, with a harpoon through the gill. There is no fight in 

 this one, stabbed in a vital spot. He is quickly brought alongside and dispatched 

 with the whale-spade. 



We return home with our two trophies in close tow. The fishermen try to 

 look casual as we pull up to the wharf. One of them is nonchalantly wiping 

 shark's blood from a harpoon. They try to look modest. But they can't help 

 swaggering a bit as they walk off the boat. After all, they just caught two 

 sharks, didn't they? 



And so it went. Day after day, we killed sharks. Except for the Chinese 

 merchants who magically appeared on the wharf and hacked off the shark's fins 

 for shark fin soup, no one seemed to have any use for the sharks, however. I am 

 by nature a thrifty man, and I brooded about this waste. Wasn't there some 

 commercial use for sharks? Couldn't a use be found for their incredibly tough 

 hide? Wouldn't their huge livers give up oil as medically valuable as cod liver 

 oil? 



No one in the Islands had the answers. Though people talked a lot about 

 sharks there, few knew very much about them. 



I remember one day I caught a beautiful Tiger shark who was carrying 

 42 young. I packed her and the babies in an ice-lined trough and exhibited the 

 whole family at the fair in Waikiki. I charged ten cents admission (collecting 

 $1,500 in a week, incidentally), and, as the viewers filed past, I answered their 

 questions. One of the visitors was a physician. He looked the Tiger and her 

 pups over very carefully, and then called me aside. 



"I'll tell you something about that mother Tiger shark that you don't know," 

 he said. 



"All right, Doctor," I replied, "what is it? I know where to find them and 

 catch them, but you can probably tell me something else." 



"Here," he said, pointing to the Tiger's mouth, "see this thin membrane 

 running around the jaw over the teeth? You don't know what that's for, do 

 you?" 



"No," I honestly replied. 



"You're a good fisherman, all right, but fishermen don't learn much about 

 anatomy. As a matter of fact, this membrane is such an oddity, you won't find 

 out anything about it in a textbook. But I happen to know that is where the 

 Tiger shark nurses her young." 



"Nurses her young!" I exclaimed. "You mean to tell me that you think . . ." 



"Think?" he interrupted. "I know. The baby Tigers are born alive— you 

 know that; you've seen them. Well, inside of the Tiger shark, when they want 

 to feed, the babies come forward to this membrane and get their food by nursing 

 at this membrane. It has to be the answer. Captain. After all, there is no 

 placenta connecting the young to the mother. So obviously they live in a free 

 state inside her, and . . ." 



I let him spin his ridiculous theory, but I wasn't listening. It simply amazed 

 me how little was known about the shark, even by so-called scientists. 



It was not until 1920, however, that I had an opportunity to satisfy my 



