The American Museum Journal 



Volume XVI 



APRIL, 1910 



Number 4 



My Fight with the Devilfish 



By RUSSKLL J. COLES 



Fokkwokd: Tho^dcvilfeh, Manlfi hiro.stris, is the largest of all the rays and one of the 

 largest creatures of the sea. There are fabulous stories of its tremendous strength and great 

 size, but it probably does not exceed a width of about twenty-five feet. It belongs to a 

 peculiar family of rays distinguished by the fact that they have a pair of flaps or feelers, one 

 at either side of the mouth, which helj) in their feeding. These feelers can be curled up 

 tightly to resemble a pair of horns and it is ])robably to this fact that the fish owes its 

 common name. The American species of devilfish, Mania birostris, occurs along the coasts of 

 Brazil, the AVest Indies, and the Gulf of Mexico. Occasionally a specimen may stray as far 

 north as New Jersey. It occurs also on the Pacific side of Mexico, ranging south to South 

 America. Specimens however, are so rare that it is not absolutely certain whether the Pacific 

 devilfish is of the same species as the Atlantic one. Mr. Russell J. Coles has fished for many 

 years in the lakes and rivers and along the coast of Canada, as well as along the Atlantic and 

 Gulf coasts, and has made many valuable contributions to the collections of the American 

 Museum's department of fishes. The expedition described below was equipped and financed 

 entirely by him and the monster devilfish he afterward presented to the American Museum is 

 now being modeled and will shortly be placed on exhibition. 



WHEN I first undertook to obtain 

 a specimen of the great devil- 

 fish {Maitta birostri.s-) for the 

 American ^luseum, I was ah'eady famil- 

 iar with the literature on this great fish, 

 and r realized that the general methods 

 of procedure, which had resulted in 

 failure for other expeditions in search of 

 it, must be improved upon. Accordingly 

 I spent some time in a careful study of 

 the problem before setting out on an ex- 

 pedition, concentrating attention chiefly 

 upon the sharks and rays. I found that 

 both sharks and rays sometimes con- 

 tinue fighting long after both brain and 

 heart have been pierced by lance and 

 bullet, but that death is instantaneous 

 when the spinal cord is severed at a cer- 

 tain spot just back of the brain. I had 

 usually been able to accomplish this on 

 the sharks and rays which I had pre- 

 viously killed, by means of a sharply 



ground whale lance, but I knew that a 

 much more effective weapon would be 

 refiuired to achie\e the same effect on 

 the great devilfish, and I therefore de- 

 signed and had forged a huge lance, more 

 than three times as heavy as a whale 

 lance, which I call a "spade lance" on 

 account of its having a square cutting 

 edge four inches wide. 



Now the Mania has been known to 

 tow a hundred-ton vessel far out to sea, 

 and on another occasion eight boats 

 lashed together, and in both these cases 

 the crew was obliged to cut the rope and 

 let the animal escape. The wonderful 

 vitality of this creature is well known 

 and there are many authentic records of 

 its having escaped capture after being 

 harpooned, lanced, and shot many times 

 with rifles of heavy calibre. 



With these facts before me it became 

 necessary to devise means to bring the 



217 



