180 
MEMOIRS OR THE QUEENSLAND MUSEUM. 
NOTES ON SOME AUSTRALIAN SHARKS. 
By Gilbert Whitley, Ichthyologist, The Australian Museum, Sydney.* 
( Plates XXVI I -XXIX ; Text-figures 1-4.) 
The study of sharks is of considerable interest and importance from 
many points of view. To most persons sharks are noteworthy on account 
of their size, ferocity, and the fact that they attack human beings from time 
to time * 1 . No practical scheme for combating the 3hark menace has yet been 
evolved. Nets and fences enclosing small bathing areas are best, but hooters 
and alarms given from a lookout on a tower, or, more recently, coloured 
lights fired from aeroplanes, are the usual form of warning in open waters. 
The biologist sees in the sharks a group of animals quite distinct from 
ordinary fishes and occupying a unique position in the vertebrate series. Their 
general physiology and their breeding habits, ranging from oviparous to 
viviparous, and the development in some forms of a structure foreshadowing 
the placenta of higher animals, are of the highest interest. Their relationships 
with fossils, and the general antiquity of the group allow the palaeontologist 
to visualise the original appearance of the remains of long extinct fossil species. 
The bibliographer or historian will find many quaint legends and 
descriptions of sharks in old books of travel, natural histories, and other 
literature. 
Sharks are of considerable commercial value both as food and for their 
by-products so that any attempt to clarify the study of them may have a 
potential economic importance 2 . They are usually caught by means of special 
nets or lines, but I have seen them experimentally killed by electrocution, a 
method which may be more extensively employed in the future. 
The notes given in this paper are mainly in the nature of preliminary 
descriptions with figures of some Australian species. In the last twelve years 
I have studied many specimens both in the Museums of Australia and New 
Zealand, and in the field. I have corresponded widely with colleagues and 
card-indexed a large amount of literature. At some future time, I hope to 
prepare a “ Shark Book ” which will form a popular guide to all the 
Australian species, with a figure of each, for the use of the general public. 
* By permission of the Trustees of The Australian Museum. 
1 See Coppleson, “Shark Attacks in Australian Waters,” in Medical Journal of 
Australia, April 15, 1933, pp. 449-467, illustr. 
2 A sample of tanned shark skin was presented to the Australian Museum by a Mr. 
Horatio Tozer so long ago as 1858. A description of the latest methods of tanning is given 
by F. A. Coombs in “The Australasian Leather Trades Review,” July 1928, pp. 13-19, illustr. 
