The Sharks— Part Tivo 355 



times ashamed to admit that they fish for it. Greenland sharks have 

 been hauled up from depths as great as 3,960 feet, and a solitary Eskimo 

 in a tinv kayak will often do the pulling on a light hand-line. 



Peter Freuchen, the famed arctic explorer, provided the authors with 

 a first-hand description of the hunting of the Greenland shark. In Thule, 

 he said, the bait the natives used was wood! He explained: 



They had harpooned some sharks that came to the surface while people were 

 cutting up walruses. In one of the sharks thev found a piece of wood. From that 

 they got the idea that sharks were crazy about wood, and on this they based 



The Greenland shark ( Somniosus microcephalus ) . 



Courtesy, Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology 



their hunting methods. They tied some stones to a piece of wood so that it 

 would sink. Then they lowered it down into the water, with long hunting lines, 

 through a hole in the ice, and dragged it very, verv slowlv up again. The sharks 

 followed the "bait" up and were harpooned at the surface. 



In the Upernivik district, there were two other ways of catching sharks 

 through the ice. One way was with "ice hooks"— big hooks fastened with a 

 chain about three feet under the ice. The bait was blubber. 



The other way, the one that was used the most, was to have hooks at the 

 bottom of the sea. The hooks were very simple. People made them out of the 

 usual hooks bought in the store. They were made in such a way as to prevent 

 the sharks from spitting them out. The hooks were joined together by melting 

 lead over the shaft. Attached to the hooks were about three feet of chain, at 

 the end of which was an iron crosspiece. About ten feet of rope was attached 

 to the hooks. Its thickness was not important; it was there because a shark would 

 tear the regular line to pieces with its file-like skin . . . 



Two— and occasionally three— sharks are sometimes caught on the 

 same hook, according to Freuchen, because the first shark swallows the 

 hook and, while hanging there helplessly, is eaten by another. "It happens 

 time and time again that you get two sharks on the same hook because 

 the second has just eaten so much of the first one he gets the hooks in 

 him as well," Freuchen said. 



"If you want to eat him," he added, "you must boil the meat three 

 times— lest the poison in it get vou. If a dog drinks the first water the 

 shark meat was boiled in, the dog will die of poison." 



Other Greenland fishermen say that the meat of the shark will make 

 a dog drunk and sleepy. Why, no one knows. Also unknown is how 



