The Sharks— Part One 315 



Though captured and beached, Whale sharks are comparatively rare 

 —about 90 have been recorded by marine scientists— they have been 

 seen traveling in schools, and are well known to fishermen in many areas 

 of the world. They are described as common around the Philippines and 

 are well known in Havana waters. (One was caught about 5 miles west of 

 the mouth of Havana harbor. It was weighed piecemeal. Its total weight 

 was approximately 9 tons. Its heart weighed 43 pounds and its liver 

 900 pounds.) 



Numerous collisions between ships and Whale sharks have been re- 

 corded in log books throughout the world. A typical report from the 

 skipper of a schooner, after a collision with a Whale shark near Cape 

 San Lucas, at the tip of Lower California, follows: 



The vessel was struck on the starboard side by an immense shark. The wheel 

 was wrenched out of the hands of the man at the wheel. The tail of the fish rose 

 8 feet above the rail of the ship and about 14 feet above the waterline. The 

 engine was stopped [since] the fish struck the propeller. The fish was dis- 

 tinctly seen when it went astern, was of a mottled color and was at least 30 to 

 35 feet long. After going into dry dock, it was found that considerable damage 

 had been done to the hull and rudder of the ship. 



Whale sharks seem to wander into the path of a ship; they certainly 

 don't appear to attack it. Perhaps they are drawn by a fatal curiosity. 

 Their predilection for being rammed by ships is enough of a recognized 

 maritime hazard for the U.S. Navy Hydrographic Office to have de- 

 voted the entire back of its June, 1948, issue of Pilot Chart of the 

 North Pacific Ocean to records of collisions between ships and Whale 

 sharks. 



There might not have been a book titled Ko?i-Tiki if a Whale shark's 

 habit was one of charging into vessels instead of being bumped by them. 

 The disquieting presence of a Whale shark gave the scientists on the 

 Kon-Tiki several bad moments. As author Thor Heyerdahl told it in 

 one of the great books of the sea,*' he had just finished a s\\ im off the 

 bow of the raft when a cry of ''Shark. ''^ rang out. Dead astern was a 

 fish with "the biggest and ugliest face" the men aboard had ever seen. 

 Heyerdahl said that the fish had the face of a sea monster "so huge and 

 so hideous that, if the Old A4an of the Sea himself came up, he could not 

 have made such an impression on us." 



The Kon-Tiki scientists had little to fear. Whale sharks are so 

 monumentally sluggish that men have literally walked all over them. 

 Conrad Limbaugh of Scripps Institution of Oceanography was once 

 with a group of skin-divers who happened upon a Whale shark. "We 

 clambered on the shark, looking it over closely, even looking into its 



•"•Thor Heyerdahl, Kon-Tiki (Chicago: Rand McNally & Co., 1950). 



