Shark-Eating Men 161 



(Galeorhinus zyopterus), sliced into fillets. The customer happened to 

 be William Ellis Ripley of the California State Bureau of Marine Fisheries. 



"Upon questioning," Ripley later reported, "the owner of the es- 

 tablishment admitted that the fillets sold for salmon had been treated 

 with food coloring to simulate the color of salmon tissue. Elsewhere 

 throughout the state, shark has been misrepresented as various other 

 species . . . Even in a fishery port such as Santa Barbara, entrepreneurs 

 have been known to pass off Bonito, Thresher and Soupfin shark as 

 halibut, rockfish, cod, etc." 



Ripley emphasized in his report on the misnamed sharks that "there 

 is no sound nutritional, esthetic, or scientific basis for the reluctance at- 

 tached to the consumption of sharks." But he pointed out that connois- 

 seurs of other kinds of fishes, while not able to tell that they are eating 

 shark, may feel that the halibut, say, is not quite up to par. "A few such 

 experiences and the halibut customer is lost to the trade," Ripley said. 

 "Therefore, if for no other reason than to maintain their integrity before 

 the fish consuming public, the industry should attempt to restrain these 

 perfidies." 



For many years, Italian and Chinese immigrants and their descendants 

 have for all practical purposes been keeping the U.S. shark market alive. 

 Of the 70,000 to 80,000 pounds of dogfish (generally Squahis acanthias) 

 sold each year in New York City's sprawling Fulton Fish Market— larg- 

 est wholesale fish market on the Atlantic Coast— almost all are sold to 

 customers of Italian extraction. On both the Atlantic and the Pacific 

 coasts, customers of Chinese extraction support a shark market with 

 their demands for fins for their cherished sharkfin soup. 



In recent years, according to U.S. Bureau of Commercial Fisheries 

 statistics, the annual receipts of dogfish and rajafish have been increasing 

 at the Fulton Fish Market, and no one knows why. In 1950, dogfish 

 landings totaled 54,800 pounds; in 1960, the dogfish catch amounted 

 to 88,600 pounds. During the same period, rajafish receipts rose from 

 71,500 to 120,600 pounds, while fish sold as just plain shark ^ dropped 

 from 69,800 pounds in 1950 to 23,500 in 1960. 



Why did shark sales drop while dogfish and rajafish sales increased? 

 One possible answer is given by T. J. Risoli, supervisory market news 

 reporter of the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries: "We do not know the 

 specific reasons for the sharp drop in shark receipts here, but we believe 

 it is probably due to the unfavorable light the shark has been seen in as 

 a result of injuries to swimmers." 



That, of course, is the major reason people do not eat shark in the 



' The Bureau of Commercial Fisheries does not include species designation in its 

 report. 



