Sharks on a Line 95 



favorite spot is Monterey Bay, California, about 60 miles south of San 

 Francisco. There, twice a year, shark derbies are held. Fishing begins 

 at 7 A.M. and continues until 1 P.M. In those 6 hours, in a typical 

 derby, fishermen will reel in about 150 sharks and rays whose total 

 weight will be around 2,000 pounds. 



Sharks often come big— so big that they cannot be weighed on ordi- 

 nary scales. Their size has to be figured out mathematically, by the 

 formula given on page 314. And sharks are fast. The Great Blue is said to 

 be able to reach speeds up to 20 miles an hour. A shark of unknown 

 species was once speared by an underwater spear-fisherman off^ Cape 

 Cod. A pursuing boat eventually overtook both the exhausted spear- 

 fisherman and his apparently tireless quarry. The boat clocked the 

 shark— and its human caboose— at 14 knots. 



One of the biggest sharks ever taken by a spear-fisherman was a 

 1,400-pound Basking shark caught in 1955. About 25 yards off Santa 

 Monica, the spear-fisherman. Bob Lorenz, spotted the huge shark. Lorenz 

 was armed with a gun that shot steel darts with cables attached. 



"I got a good shot in, just ahead of the dorsal fin," Lorenz said. "The 

 shark headed for the open sea, and sounded in about 10 feet of water. 

 I followed the line down and hit him again, but it wasn't a good shot. 

 His lashing tail stirred up the sand so that it was hard to see. The dart 

 hit just forward of the tail." 



Lorenz continued the battle in his boat, a 30-foot cruiser. The cables 

 were made fast to the boat, and the fish towed it for 90 minutes until 

 Lorenz and three other men managed to pull it in and lash it to the 

 side of the boat. It measured 13 feet, 9 inches. 



Neither the Basking shark nor the Whale shark is a game fish, but 

 their sheer enormousness attracts fishermen interested in landing some- 

 thing larger than anyone else has ever landed. Native fishermen in the 

 Persian Gulf say they catch the Whale shark by rowing alongside its 

 lazily moving hulk and then boarding it. A fisherman walks down to the 

 torpid shark's mouth, stuffs a big iron hook into it, and then reboards 

 the boat, which tows the shark ashore. 



Still, the Whale shark can give a ponderous battle, not between the 

 sports fisherman and itself, but between itself and the fisherman's boat. 

 One day, during the annual Bimini A4arlin Tournament in the Bahamas 

 off Miami, a 45-foot cruiser, the Alberta, was searching for marlin. The 

 biggest tackle aboard was a light rod spooled with 9-thread line. But 

 when the skipper. Captain Johnny Cass, spotted the hulk of a Whale 

 shark, he decided to try for it. 



Another boat had got a flying gaff into the 37-foot fish, but the gaff 

 had hardly slowed it down. When the Alberta hove to, the skipper of 

 the other boat told Cass he was welcome to try his hand at the shark. 



