160 



Man and Shark 



A skate is visible in front of the lobster in this eighteenth-century painting, The Fish 

 Merchant, sometimes ascribed to Hogarth, but probably painted by Joseph van Aken. 



Courtesy, The Clerk to the Worshipful Company of Fishmongers, London 



Steaks can be sold as swordfish steaks, and few people will know the 

 difference. 



Similarly, some fish marketers wield a device like a cookie-cutter 

 on the pliable, fleshy wings of skates. The disk that is punched out 

 looks, to an untrained eye, very much like a scallop. A true aficionado 

 of scallops would detect the counterfeit, although it tastes good. (It 

 must be labeled "Deep Sea Scallop," or by some other name, to be of- 

 fered legally.) 



In some U.S. fish markets, dogfish are sold as "grayfish" and skates 

 are sold as "rajafish." Mako sharks and possibly other species may be 

 legally marketed as "swordfish" in some areas, but the extent of these 

 laws is not clear. 



One day in the summer of 1944, a patron in a Long Beach, California, 

 restaurant, looked coldly at some fish being sold as white sea bass, Cali- 

 fornia halibut, barracuda, and salmon. The salmon looked particularly 

 suspicious, but all of the fish, the patron knew, was actually Soupfin shark 



