172 Man a?id Shark 



designed to catch shark. When the boat reaches the sharking grounds, 

 a winch unwinds the long-Une, which has 300 to 500 hooks strung from 

 it. Buoys mark the ends of the lines. This one boat may sow as many 

 as 2,000 hooks for the shark harvest. When the hooks are pulled in by 

 the winch, a three-man crew works with assembly-line speed. As each 

 4- or 5-foot shark is hauled over the stern, it is swiftly gaffed, unhooked, 

 and beheaded by one man. Another man is working the winch. A 

 third is cleaning the beheaded sharks as they are tossed to him. This is 

 not a pleasant job, for fresh sharks develop an ammonia-like odor and, 

 on a warm day, the odor is so overwhelming that the crewmen often 

 suffer headaches, stiffness of the jaws, and nausea. 



But the suffering pays off. A catch of 160 sharks is not unusual. 

 Each averages about 22 pounds, dressed. That adds up to 3,520 pounds 

 of fish, and in Melbourne, where more shark is sold than any other 

 variety of fish, the catch would be worth more than $300. 



Shark was once discreetly called "flake" in Australia, but in recent 

 years it has been sold openly as shark, in both Australia and New Zealand, 

 and the demand has been great enough to produce large-scale commercial 

 shark fishing. So unrestrained did the shark fishing become, in fact, that 

 the Commonwealth Fisheries Office began a campaign to protect certain 

 sharks from extinction— and this in a country where bathers have been 

 trying for years to protect themselves from the shark! Sharks classified 

 as "man-eaters" are not sold in Australian markets, but this is the only 

 commercial notice paid to those sharks that reverse Australians' shark- 

 eating habits. 



The Fisheries Office tried to educate shark fishermen in the ways of 

 conservation by circulating a film whose title. These Sharks Need Pro- 

 tection, must have struck Australian bathers as rather ironic. Finally, 

 strict conservation laws had to be passed, despite the opposition of some 

 fishermen. The two principal protected sharks used for food in Aus- 

 tralia are the Schnapper, School, or Sharpie shark {Galeorhiniis ajistralis), 

 which grows to about 5 feet, and the Gummy shark (Mustelus antarcti- 

 cus), which usually grows to about 3 feet. The Gummy gets its name 

 from its "toothless" appearance. Actually, it has pavement-like teeth. 

 Because of its tendency to stink after it has been out of the water a 

 while, it is called by a name imported from England: "Sweet William." 



Government-sponsored studies of the School shark have shown that 

 a strict conservation program is necessary if Australians are going to 

 enjoy eating shark for many years to come. Although females usually 

 carry about 28 young, it takes 12 years for the smallest female School 

 shark to give birth to her first brood. And the smallest male does not 

 mature until it is at least 10 years old. For some reason, only about half 

 of the adult females carry young each year. All these facts add up to 



