184 Man and Shark 



potency, Guaragnella happened to see some fishermen dressing a Soupfin 

 shark (Galeorhinus zy opterus) , whose colloquial name derived from the 

 Chinese gourmet's preference for its fins in shark fin soup. Guaragnella 

 noticed that the Soupfin's liver was immense. Again, he had a hunch. 



This time the chemist's report was fantastic. The liver of the Soupfin 

 was ten times more potent in vitamin A than the liver of the dogfish, 

 which meant that the Soupfin liver oil was 100 times richer in vitamin 

 A than cod liver oil itself! 



Guaragnella announced that he would buy all the Soupfin sharks 

 the fishermen could bring in, and that he would pay $40 a ton for them. 

 Word of his startling offer flashed through the waterfront of San Fran- 

 cisco and up the West Coast as far as Alaska. Soon, too, other whole- 

 salers learned the secret of their competitor's sudden desire for shark 

 livers. And the bidding for shark livers began. 



Another CaHfomia "Gold Rush" was on! The new El Dorado was 

 called "gray gold," and the fishermen who set out to mine the California 

 seas were as wild with "gold" fever as their prospecting predecessors 

 had been. Prices, set by daily bidding in fishermen's exchanges, shot 

 up from Guaragnella's original $40 a ton to $60 . . . $80 . . . $100. 

 From Alaska to Mexico fishermen deserted their usual commercial fishing 

 banks to seek a bonanza of Soupfins. The price kept rocketing. By 

 September, 1941, it was hitting $1,200 a ton! 



The attack on Pearl Harbor was only three months away, but the 

 Japanese suspended their growing belligerency toward the United States 

 long enough to profit from the shark-oil boom. Tons of frozen shark 

 liver were shipped out of Japan to meet the insatiable demands of the 

 United States. 



And the bidding kept on. By the time the United States had entered 

 the war, the price had hit $1,500 a ton. The average Soupfin was worth 

 $25. Some of the larger ones were worth $200 each for their livers alone. 



Never before had fishermen earned so much money so quickly. A 

 San Francisco fishing boat went off on a four-day Soupfin hunt and came 

 back to the wharf with $17,500 worth of shark. One fisherman made 

 $40,000 in five months. The professionals weren't the only ones making 

 money. Students at the University of Washington skipped classes to fish 

 for shark in Puget Sound. Farm boys who had never been to sea were 

 recruited by shark fishermen and earned as much as $800 for a week's 

 work. 



Most of the sharks were caught in gill nets, which are either suspended 

 from the surface, like great curtains a half mile or more in length, or 

 dropped to the bottom, where floats along their top and weights along 

 their bottom keep them vertical. The sharks, pursuing smaller fish, 

 such as sardines, swam into the diamond-shaped openings of the net's 



