PIGEON BAY SHARK

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29724, 18 January 1962, Page 12

PIGEON BAY SHARK

Identification Not Possible

The big red shark which a Banks Peninsula farmer, Mr A. C. Reynish, hooked on a set line off Pigeon Bay this week, has not been positively identified.

Mr Reynish said the shark had “a big flat head and great wide mouth, and was purple-red in colour.” He cut the shark adrift. The shark, which was very savage and violent when hauled alongside, was about three feet longer than the 12Jft power-boat from which Mr Reynish and a friend were Ashing. Mr Reynish reported a number of similar sharks in the area of a kind he had not before seen. Mr J. Moreland, an ichthyologist at the Dominion Museum, said it was not possible to identify the shark without more precise details. Mr Moreland said there were more sharks in New Zealand waters than for a number of years. The cause was the hot dry summer, with consequent lower runoff, which had resulted in warmer clearer water inshore. This provided attractive conditions and good visibility for food-hunting sharks. Mr Moreland said from the descripition given by Mr Reynish the shark could have been a seven-gill shark, a species which could grow to the size indicated by Mr Reynish, and which had been proved dangerous around Australian beaches. It could also have been a bronze whaler shark. It was, said Mr Moreland, difficult to establish which kind of shark was the most dangerous to bathers in New Zealand waters because there had been too few recorded attacks in New Zealand from which to formulate a pattern. The biggest and most formidable shark vas the white shark, which could grow up to 20ft. White sharks of this size were very large in girth and could swallow a big man whole without difficulty. Other sharks which could menace New Zealand bathers included the bronze whaler shark, the tiger shark the blue shark, and the mako. with propensities for attacking bathers probably in that order.