ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY BULLETIN 



A BOAT LOAD OF SHARKS 

 Taking sharks From the nets. Sanibel Island, Florida 

 Cuurte 



THE CATCH LANDED 

 . f,,r leather, oil, etc. Sanibel Island. Florida 



shades of black and brown, some of it smooth 

 and polished and some showing shrunken grain. 

 Shark leather resists dampness and makes ex- 

 cellent shoes. While its preparation costs about 

 the same as that of other leathers, it is sold at 

 a lower price, one dol- 

 lar a square foot, as the 

 supply of skins can lie 

 had for the cost of 

 catching. Like Pat's pig, 

 the shark raises him- 

 self. 



The skins of sharks 

 have often been tested 

 by tanners, hut having 

 a hard shagreen surface 

 which was difficult to 

 remove, their utilization 

 did not get far beyond 

 the experimental stage. 

 By a recently discov- 

 ered process, the hard 

 shagreen is now re- 

 moved without difficul- 

 ty. The horny matter 

 of which it is composed 

 is completely dissolved 

 chemically in an hour or 

 two, leaving the surface 

 as smooth as that of 

 other skins. 



The nets used in the new shark fishery are 

 gill-nets, made especially strong for the pur- 

 pose. They are from six hundred to eight hun- 

 dred feet in length, with meshes measuring from 



LEATHER FROM SANDBAJR 

 (Shrunken grain) 

 Courtesy Ocean Leather ( 



eight to fourteen inches, according to the sizes of 



the sharks to be captured. They are set in the 



open sea not far from shore, and also in the 



deep channels of estuaries. Pound nets are also 



used for taking sharks in Florida waters. It is 



stated that one of the 



gill-nets captured two 



thousand sharks within 



ten days. 



More than a dozen 

 different kinds of sharks 

 appear in the catch and 

 all kinds and sizes are 

 available for leather. 



The shark fishing 

 stations now in opera- 

 tion have been equipped 

 for converting the car- 

 cases into oil and fertil- 

 izer. Shark liver oil is 

 worth about a dollar a 

 gallon unrefined. 



We have not as yet 

 made much use of the 

 shark for food, but the 

 food of the shark, like 

 that of other fishes, is 

 fish, and in countries 

 where it is used as food 

 it is known to be pala- 

 table and wholesome. A 

 paper read by Mr. Allen Rogers before the 

 American Chemical Society in September 1919 

 deals with the use of shark meat as a food 

 product and shows that it would be possible 



