166 Man and Shark 



By the eve of World War I, dogfish had become victims of prosperity. 

 Cursed as trash, they were thrown away by the fishermen unlucky 

 enough to land them. 



But, just as grass is always greener in the yard next door, so, ap- 

 parently, are sharks more tasty from foreign waters. For, around 1922, 

 the English began importing dogfish from Norway, even though British 

 waters abounded with them. The Norwegian dogfish, well packed and 

 in prime condition, again found a ready market among the fish 'n' chips 

 merchants. The merchants claimed that the dogfish were fine for frying 

 because they absorbed less oil. Put a mess of dogfish in a deep-fat 

 fryer, the merchants said, and the dogfish would use up less fat than a 

 comparable weight of bony fish. 



Today, more than 17,000,000 pounds of dogfish and 24,000,000 

 pounds of skates and rays are landed in Great Britain each year, much 

 of the catch finding its way into London's Billingsgate Market, the acre 

 of fish and fishmongers which has been noisily supplying Englishmen 

 with their fish for centuries. 



A single boat in a single day may land as much as a ton of salable 

 dogfish. In official publications and in fishery reports, the catches are 

 frankly described as dogfish, skate, and ray. The old habit of disguising 

 the selachians with fanciful names still persists, however. Good old 

 "rock salmon" is still used, along with "nursehound,"^ "flake" and "huss." 

 No longer fashionable, probably because it was just a bit too much, is 

 "Folkestone beef." 



Calling upon Britishers to face the dogfish name problem squarely, 

 a Member of Parliament recently went on record with a plea for stand- 

 ardizing shark nomenclature. He lamented the habit of calling all species 

 of sharks by the same name, dogfish. Spur dogfish, he orated, is "sweet 

 and nutritious"; Sandy dogfish is "quite good to eat." But some kinds 

 of dogfish, he thundered, "smell like a polecat." 



The honorable MP's confusion is shared by many an Englishman, 

 for no less than six species of vaguely named sharks are eaten in Great 

 Britain, and some of them, at times, do smell like polecats. The pungency 

 of one has led to its being nicknamed "Sweet William," after a British 

 flower that has a pleasant scent. The British common and scientific 

 names of the dogfish regularly marketed as food in England are: the 

 Pinked dogfish {Squalus acanthias). Lesser Spotted dogfish (Scyllhmi 

 cafiicula), and Greater Spotted dogfish (Scylliufn catulus). 



Today, in the more than 17,000 fish 'n' chips shops that flourish 

 in Britain, dogfish and skates are among the most popular fish. But 

 sharply distinguished geographical zones have somehow spnmg up to 



2 This is a "popular" name for all dogfish in the British Isles. 



