Shark Treasures 



185 



A shark gill net as used in shark fishing on the U.S. Pacific Coast. Once the shark's 

 gill slits are snagged in the net, it cannot get away. When shark fishing was at its 

 zenith during the Soupfin shark bonanza, gill net vessels fished the entire coast from 

 Washington to southern Califomia. Courtesy, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service 



weave and were trapped when their gills or fins became snared by the 

 net. Unable to back up, the sharks hung there. In their death struggles, 

 the sharks often ruined the nets. Or hagfish {Myxine), a relative of 

 the lamprey, provided with a rare opportunity to turn from prey to 

 predator, attacked the enmeshed sharks. Like the fishermen, the hagfish 

 were after the sharks' soft parts, and many a net was hauled up with 

 liverless sharks. So many sharks were being taken and so great was the 

 price, however, that the cost of damaged nets or damaged sharks could 

 be absorbed by the West Coast fishermen, when as many as 200 sharks 

 were pulled in with one haul of a net. 



While the frenzied, every-man-for-himself shark rush was going on 

 along the West Coast of the United States and Canada, a more systematic 

 assault on the shark was being organized in Florida by an organization 

 known as Shark Industries, Inc. It had been found that other types of 



