356 Shark and Company 



the legendarily lethargic Greenland shark is able to capture fish by lying 

 on the bottom waiting for them to swim by. Good-sized cod and salmon 

 have been found in Greenland sharks, as have seals— and a reindeer (with- 

 out horns). 



Dr. Bjern Bjerland, of the Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries, may 

 have an answer to part of this one. Tiny luminous crustaceans fix them- 

 selves in the Greenland shark's eye, and may act as lures for fish. This 

 still leaves the reindeer unexplained. 



This sluggish shark, able to withstand the rigor of freezing water, 

 is believed to be the only large shark found in arctic waters. A close 

 relative {So^rmiosiis pacificiis Bigelow and Schroeder, 1944) is found 

 in the north Pacific and the Bering Strait, and a third (S. ro stratus Risso, 

 1826) is found in the Mediterranean. An 8-foot shark similar to the 

 Greenland shark was found cast up on Macquarie Island, a few hundred 

 miles from the Antarctic Circle. The body of this solitary shark, men- 

 tioned earlier, shows that southern polar seas are within the possible 

 range of a species resembling the Greenland shark. The Macquarie 

 Island shark {Sonmiosus antarcticus Whitley, 1939) remains today the 

 only recorded antarctic species. 



The Greenland shark itself can also survive in water at least as warm 

 as 53°F. In the eighteenth century, when Atlantic Right whales were 

 being killed off the Massachusetts coast, Greenland sharks flocked to 

 the scene of the whale slaughters. When whaling stopped, so, ap- 

 parently, did the unusual southern exposure of the Greenland shark. 



Numerous large eggs— as many as one and a half barrels of them 

 in a single female— have been discovered repeatedly in Greenland sharks. 

 Though no laid eggs were ever dredged up, the assumption was that 

 the shark laid eggs, possibly without tgg cases, in the chill mud of 

 arctic sea bottoms. The mystery was cleared up in 1954 when a fisher- 

 man caught, near the Faroe Islands, a 16-foot Greenland shark which 

 carried ten young. The fisherman's find finally established, after decades 

 of speculation, that the Greenland shark brings forth its young alive. 



The Greenland shark has been fished for by Norwegians for cen- 

 turies, not only in Greenland where as many as 30,000 are caught a 

 year, and along the rim of the arctic, but also in Norway itself, for it 

 enters the fjords, often destroying the gear of commercial fishermen 

 who are after tusk and halibut. These sharks are sought primarily for 

 their liver oil. 



In its wanderings south of the Arctic Ocean, it dips into the White 

 Sea of Russia, skirts the British Isles along the North Sea coast, and 

 sometimes enters the English Channel (one was caught at the mouth 

 of the River Seine). In the western Atlantic, it is found from Greenland 

 to the Gulf of Maine. Its Pacific relative (known as the Sleeper shark) 



