7 2 
Wild Life in Southern Seas. 
But I want to say something of how and where 
sharks are caught and of those who catch them. 
In the high, fertile islands of the North 
and South Pacific, such as Samoa, the Hervey 
Group, and the Society Islands there is but 
little of this dangerous fishing done. Nature 
there is too bounteous to the brown-skinned 
people. Born to a fruitful soil, with abundance 
of both vegetable and animal food, the natives 
have no need to exploit the ocean day and 
night in order to live, as do the wild, sun¬ 
baked denizens of the low-lying Equatorial 
atolls of the Gilbert and Marshall groups 
and the countless coral islets of the Western 
Carolines, where the people know naught of 
the joys of the mealy yam or taro, and the 
toothsome baked bread-fruit and sucking-pig 
are not. For there is nothing to eat on such 
islands as those but coconuts and fish, varied 
occasionally by puraka —a huge, coarse vege¬ 
table as thick as an elephant’s leg, with a 
touch of elephantiasis thrown in. 
But there are plenty of sharks. They 
swarm. Go out in a canoe at night-time, 
anywhere in one of the lagoons, light a torch 
of au lama (dried coconut leaves), and look. 
