The Sharks— Part One 



299 



The Great White shark (Car char odon carcharias) ; with tooth. 



Courtesy, The Sears Foundation for Marine Research from 

 Fishes of the Western North Atlantic by Henry B. Bigelow and Wilham C. Schroeder, 1948 



6 to 7 feet long. They also eat sea turtles, easily crunching through the 

 shells; and seals cleanly bitten in two have been found in their stomachs. 



In 1959, a thirst-crazed elephant stampeded into the sea at Kenya, 

 Africa. It was heading for an island off the mainland, where, apparently, 

 it believed it could find water. The elephant never made it. Huge sharks 

 swarmed around it, and in a frenzy of feasting, tore it to shreds. Fisher- 

 men who saw the massacre of the elephant did not identify the sharks. 

 But some may well have been Great Whites, asserting their sovereignty 

 over any creatures that come their way. 



This is a shark whose lethal jaws have been known to seamen since 

 ancient times. Jonathan Couch, in his History of the Fishes of the 

 British Islands, summed up the beliefs of generations of seafarers by 

 saying of the Great White: "It is to sailors the most formidable of all the 

 inhabitants of the sea, for in none besides are the powers of inflicting 

 injury so equally combined with eagerness to accomplish it." This 

 reputed eagerness for human flesh is a claim not accepted by scientists. 

 But the Great White's lust for food is so insatiable that any food— small 

 fish, large fish, squid, other sharks, dogs, horses or men— is devoured 

 indiscriminately. 



Though the subject of countless sea yams, the Great White shark 

 has remained a mystery to ichthyologists. Nothing is known of its breed- 

 ing habits, and its wanderings through the seas of the world seem almost 

 random at times, as if each Great White were an individual, untrammeled 

 by any zoning laws. Great Whites are known in all warm seas, including 

 the Mediterranean, but they have been found in many northern waters 

 in warm months. Reports of captures or reliable sightings have been 



