72 Ma?i Against Shark 



his knife to cut the hide away from the carcass. The hide is washed down with 

 sea water, then put in a barrel of brine for 3 or 4 hours to prepare it for 

 fleshing. 



Fleshing is done by stretching the hide on a beaming board, a stout board 

 about 3 feet wide and 5 feet long, which is curved to match the beaming 

 knife, a curved, 16-inch blade with handles on both ends. Excess flesh is removed 

 by carefully drawing the knife along the hide. It is now ready to be cured. 

 Generous amounts of salt are spread on the flesh surface of the hide in the 

 curing process. This is done in the salt house, at the end of the wharf. There, 

 too, the hides are baled for shipment to the tannery. 



While this is going on, the carcass of the shark is being readied for eventual 

 sale. Though most species of shark provide tasty meat (I rank it among the 

 best fish I've ever eaten), because of the prejudices that exist against shark, we 

 had to find another use for the nutritious meat. The answer was fertilizer. 



The carcasses were wheeled, on a narrow-gauge railway, from the skinning 

 platform to the fertilizer sheds. Here, in several large frame buildings, was the 

 machinery for reducing the carcasses to fertilizer. The carcass of each shark 

 was run through a hopper, where it was ground up. Then the finely chopped 

 pieces were fed into a hot-air dryer. The dried product was next pulverized 

 and put into bags. The result was a fine fertilizer, so rich in vitamins and min- 

 erals that it had to be mixed with other, less potent fertiHzers for best results. 



The disassembly line had still other by-products. The shark's big, vitamin- 

 filled liver was rendered by boiling it in a double-boiler contraption, then 

 skimming off^ the oil. The fins were dried and shipped to Chinese merchants 

 who sold them for shark fin soup. The teeth and dried jaws went to curio 

 dealers. 



Because of Prohibition, we had another unexpected by-product. I found out 

 about this one night when one of the men at the station (most of us lived in 

 bunkhouses right near the wharves) invited me to have a few drinks. I was 

 surprised that he was serving the real stuff. Imported, too. 



When I asked him where he had got it, he looked around very carefully 

 and then told me the story. It seemed that a rum-runner had run aground on 

 a sand spit offshore a few nights before. Afraid the Coast Guard would catch 

 him if he was still hung up there at dawn, the rum-runner jettisoned his load of 

 imported liquor. Thus lightened, the boat floated clear of bottom and the rum- 

 runner sped off. 



Somehow— my host never explained this— he heard about the bootlegger's 

 jettisoned cargo. He went out with a grappling line and fished up several cases 

 of liquor. He was a fisherman, not a bootlegger, though. He never sold a bottle. 

 He just became a grand host and a connoisseur of fine spirits. 



Bootleggers soon realized that our shark-fishing could be a fine cover-up 

 for rum-running operations. I was approached by one of the members of the 

 local gang, who made me an offer. His ingenious idea was for me to rendezvous 

 with a liquor-carrying boat offshore after I had got my day's catch of sharks. 

 I was to stuff bottles of liquor into the sharks and then go ashore. There, a 

 member of the gang, who was to get a job working on the wharf, would 

 smuggle the contraband into a "special shipment" of fertilizer. It sounded like 



