Captain Shark-Killer 73 



a great idea. But I turned it down. I'd take my chance with real sharks, but 

 not the human variety. 



Shark-catching here is not as spectacular as it was in my mano -harpooning 

 days. But it is much more effective. We set our nets in the afternoon to trap 

 sharks, who do most of their foraging for food at night. Each day before sunset 

 we embark on our three small boats and put out to the sharking grounds at 

 Western Shoals or Cape Lookout. Each boat has ten nets, each of which is 

 rigged with two anchors and four buoys. The anchors pull the net to the 

 bottom, and the buoys mark the nets on the surface. A line strung with lead 

 pulls the bottom of the net down, and a line strung with cork buoys holds up 

 the top of the net. 



The net hangs vertically in the water like a curtain. The nets are staggered 

 so that a long line of them stretches for about half a mile out from shore. Thus, 

 the sharks are stopped by the net "curtain" as they head for shallow water in 

 search for food. 



The nets are hung so that they will "fin" the shark. He swims into the net, 

 whose diamond-shaped openings allow his head to get through, but hold him 

 by his pectoral fins. Once trapped, the shark cannot back up. He is simply 

 incapable of backing up. He hangs there and tries to get away by rolling. This 

 maneuver only enmeshes him more. Frequently, his rolling wraps the net around 

 his gill slits, and prevents him from breathing. He dies by suffocation. 



Just before dawn, we set out again for the nets. Hand over hand, the crew 

 hauls the boat along the length of each net, pulling up the cork line and passing 

 it aft. When a shark's head breaks surface, it is hooked through the jaw. The 

 shark is clubbed and, hopefully dead, is swung aboard. 



Sometimes we set trawls. To a long line, secured at both ends by anchors 

 and buoys, we fasten "gangens," or lengths of line about a fathom long strung 

 with a length of chain and a steel, king-sized sharkhook baited with fresh- 

 caught white fish. From 25 to 50 of these lines are set. The next morning, when 

 we haul in the catch, often all we get are sharks' heads. The entire bodies, up 

 to the gill slits, have been eaten by cannibalistic sharks. Sometimes, as we pulled 

 in the trawls, the cannibals would still be attacking their helpless relatives. 



Most of our luck, though, is good. The same cannot be said of the menhaden 

 fishermen, for our good luck is their very bad luck. Cape Lookout is a great 

 "pogie," or menhaden, fishing ground. The menhaden are caught by surround- 

 ing the huge schools with purse seines a thousand feet long. Once the seine is 

 closed and the bottom pursed with a draw string, thousands of "pogies" are 

 caught. 



The sight of this mass of trapped prey is maddening to a shark. He bites a 

 hole in the net, and the "pogies" pour out— right into the shark's mouth. Other 

 sharks converge at the feast. Each one bites one or more big holes in the net 

 to gorge himself on the fish, whose short-lived freedom ends where the shark's 

 maw begins. The sharks stuff themselves on "pogies." I once caught a shark 

 who had just left a "pogie" feast. He had in his bulging stomach 57 fish, each 

 5 to 8 inches long, and each swallowed head first, which showed that the shark 

 had got them as they swam toward him, undoubtedly from a net he or another 

 raider had ripped open. 



