348 Shark and Company 



the body of a man and a tattered striped cotton shirt were found. Ever 

 since that day, the Hammerhead has been named a potential killer. 



Unlike many of the known dangerous species, however, the Ham- 

 merhead is disturbingly plentiful. There have been 30, even 40 embryos 

 found in Hammerheads. Their breeding grounds are believed to exist in 

 at least two areas popular with bathers— Hawaii and Long Island. In 

 Australia, the Hawaiian Islands, Florida, California— wherever the Ham- 

 merhead's strange profile has loomed— it has been classified as extremely 

 dangerous. Yet, considering its abundance and murderous notoriety, its 

 known depredations upon bathers are surprisingly few. A Hammerhead 

 killed a man in the Virgin Islands in 1963. Hammerhead attacks have been 

 recorded also from Florida, Australia, and British Guiana. 



Russell J. Coles, describing cannibal sharks he caught off Cape Look- 

 out, North Carolina, told of a 13-foot, 10-inch female Hammerhead 

 which had "just eaten four of her own species from my net, two of 

 which had been swallowed whole, except the heads . . ." Despite their 

 forbidding stingers. Sting rays are frequently eaten by their cousins, 

 the sharks. Hammerhead sharks seem to find them delectable, and ap- 

 parently have developed an immunity to the poison secreted in the ray's 

 sting. One captured Hammerhead was particularly gluttonous. An al- 

 most perfect skeleton of a Sting ray was found in its stomach, and 

 imbedded in its jaws were more than 50 stings. 



The cosmopolitan range of the Hammerhead was recognized as far 

 back as Oppian's time, for the ancient poet wrote: 



The monstrous Balance-Fish,^ of hideous Shape 

 Rounds jetting Lands, and doubles every Cape. 



The prolific, ubiquitous Hammerhead appears in several distinct spe- 

 cies, and each species has its own peculiarities. 



Hammerhead 



(Sphyrna diplana Springer, 1941 ) 

 The head, though generally mallet-shaped, is scalloped. The shark 

 grows to at least 8 feet and is so common off^ the southeastern Florida 

 coast that as many as 19 have been taken in a single day in the same 

 area. It ranges the tropical and warm-temperate Atlantic, the Gulf of 

 Mexico, and probably the Mediterranean. 



Bonnet Shark 



{Sphyrna tibiiro Linnaeus, 1758) 



(Also Known as Shovelhead, Shovel-Nosed Shark, Bonnet Nose) 



Its head isn't hammer- or mallet-shaped, but shovel-shaped. Between 



the months of June and October it is one of the most abundant species 



^ It was called balance-fish because of the fancied resemblance of its head to a 

 balance scale. 



