chapter 11 



The Sharks 

 Part One 



Sharks they are, all of them— immense 

 and tiny, coastal and pelagic, familiar 

 and bizarre, sleek and cumbersome, rare and abundant. It is a vast and 

 varied host, with its 350 or more species swimming in every sea. 



But within this diversity there are clusters of similarity, groups of 

 sharks that resemble one another enough to be placed in the same 

 family. Some families are veritable clans, encompassing numerous species 

 and spanning the seas of all the world. Other families can muster but 

 one known species. Such is the case of the: 



Family Chlamy doselachidae— ¥rii.i,ed Sharks 



Dr. Samuel Garman, who made a virtually life-long study of the 

 shark, once said of the Frilled shark that it "stands nearer the true fish 

 than do the sharks proper." Because of its primitive form and look of 

 antiquity, Garrhan considered it "the living representative" of the pre- 

 histoiic Cladodiis, which had vanished from the earth eons before. 



Carman's nineteenth-century classification, since revised on the basis 

 of modern knowledge of fossil sharks, dramatized the primeval nature of 

 the Frilled shark, a six-gilled shark that is set apart from all other six-gilled 

 species— and indeed from all other known modern sharks— by the ex- 

 ceedingly archaic arrangement of its first gill opening. This opening is a 

 slit that extends continuously across its throat, from one side of its head 

 to the other. 



With its odd, frilled collar, its long, slender body and its reptilian 

 head, the Frilled shark looks more like a strange sea snake than a shark— 

 at least at first glance. Its single dorsal fin is small and is placed near its 

 tail, which is practically a single long upper lobe; the lower lobe is 

 almost invisible. 



The only known species of Frilled shark (Chlamydoselachus angui- 

 ?2eiis Garman, 1884) has been found in the waters of Japan and in the 

 eastern Atlantic, from Portugal to Norway.^ Two have been caught off 



1 Two were caught in British waters within little more than a year, the magazine 

 Nature reported in November, 1962. They were caught at depths of more than 1,600 

 feet. 



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