The Sharks— Part One 301 



feet in length, a Mako may weigh more than 1,000 pounds, and it is 

 believed that the Alako reaches a length of at least 13 feet. Zane Grey, 

 incidentally, was not the only writer to match strength and wits with 

 the Mako— in 1936, Ernest Hemingway caught a record Mako, weighing 

 786 pounds, with rod and reel off Bimini, the Bahamas. 



The Mako's fight on the hook is tireless and fierce. It will leap 

 again and again to shake off the maddening fetter that deprives it of 

 its freedom. Often, in the open seas that it roams, the Mako will leap 

 for the seeming joy of being alive and unvanquished. Its fighting instinct 

 is so strong that it may hunt the Broadbill swordfish, rarely menaced 

 by any marine enemy. 



Two Halifax fishermen once came upon a battle between several 

 sharks and a single swordfish. By the time they reached the scene of the 

 fight, the swordfish's head, sword, and tail had been bitten off, and a 

 pack of 8 or 10 sharks still swirled about it. As the fishermen hauled 

 the remains of the swordfish into their boat, one of the sharks frenziedly 

 attempted to leap into the boat after it, which sounds like an angry 

 Mako. 



Captain Nathaniel E. Atwood, a New England fisherman and amateur 

 naturalist, exhibited before the Boston Society of Natural History in 

 1866 the jaws of a large shark believed to have been a Mako. "In the 

 stomach of this specimen," he said, "nearly the whole of a full-grown 

 swordfish was found, and some ten or twelve wounds in the skin of the 

 shark gave evidence of the contest which must have occurred." 



In more modern times, a 120-pound swordfish (Xiphias gladius) was 

 found— with sword still attached— in the stomach of a 730-pound Mako 

 taken near Bimini. 





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The Mako shark (Isuius oxyiinchus). 



Courtesy, American Museum of Natural History 



