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Shark and Company 



morsels of food, they "hurry back again like children afraid of losing 

 their nurse." When a shark has been hooked and is being hauled out 

 of the water, its Pilot fish excitedly swim around its ascending body 

 almost as if they are fretting about the loss of their big, bountiful, pro- 

 tective companion. 



We have herein collected numerous reports of species of sharks, 

 skates and rays from all over the world. To catalogue all such reports 

 is far beyond the scope of this book. No one knows how many 

 species exist, and no one has any real certainty as to the number of 

 species that may inhabit or visit the coastal and offshore waters of any 

 continent. 



The accompanying tables give a capsule description of the most 

 common sharks, skates, rays, and "links" found in U.S. waters. The 

 tables were prepared by J. R. Thompson and Stewart Springer of the 

 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. In their own introduction to these 

 tables,^ they aptly explain the difficulty of keeping track of the innu- 

 merable species of sharks that inhabit the oceans of the world. They 

 remark: 



Obstacles to the study of cartilaginous fishes are many. Most of these fishes 

 are pelagic, and many of them inhabit the open waters of the high seas where 

 large ocean-going vessels are needed for their study. Many species are confined 

 to relatively great depths where collection is difficult and expensive. Even those 

 species that inhabit shallower, coastal waters require special collecting and 

 handling techniques. They are difficult to keep in captivity, and their collection 

 and study as living animals is quite expensive . . . 



9 In Sharks, Skates, Rays, and Chimaeras, Fish and Wildlife Circular 119, U.S. 

 Government Printing Office, Washington, 1961. 



This Great Hammerhead {Sphyrim tudes) with her 22 pups was captured in the Gulf 

 of Campeche by the trawler Silver Bay while under charter to the Bureau of Com- 

 mercial Fisheries, U.S. Department of the Interior. 



Photo by Joaquim Rivers, U.S. Bureau of Commercial Fisheries 



