MONEY IN SHARKS

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 92, 15 October 1927, Page 20

MONEY IN SHARKS

A POSSIBLE INDUSTRY

■■»-.'■■-. ■.-■•■ - • Those terrible, grim Hunters of ■ the tea,.' sharks; are very prevalent in-Aus: tralian waters, where the temperature of -the sea- around the greater portion of the Commonwealth's coast is sufficiently warm to keep them there all the year round. There is food in abundance for the sharks, and the moheters play great havoc with the fish. There are times, however, when the ehafHli show a distinct taste^for other flesh. Where cattle abattoirs exist, they haunt the water which is littered ■with, the offal. Human lives have also been lost. Invariably in shark-infest-ed waters swimmers' exercise the greatest precautions. But sharks have been' known to come into three feet of water end .take terrified swimmers out to sea.

Therare different varieties of sharks Wound Australia, and naturally the nan-eater is the most feared and loathed. The great Pacific shark, commonly known as the grey nurse variety, often attains a length of forty feet. Imagine what chance a human being has in the water against a brute of such dimensions!

Australia is greatly interested in the toro'ject of an English company which ess }put considerable capital into an Enterprise to make money from sharks. flPhJa /company has brought machinery tint front'England'and established itself fet Carnarvon, on the West Australian Coast. Bound there sharks abound. Thai company hopes-to catch from a hundred sharks upwards daily, and they ftre "to be boiled down. Leather^ oil, tneat, manure, gelatine, and gum.are, to be secured as by-producta. Shagreen, the leather cured from the shark's skin, Is a rare ,and expensive article on the; World's market and is keenly sought' for. So also is an oil obtained from the liver. Other parts of sharks are commercially sold as meat. The dried Sntestines are used as fertiliser, while Other organs yield good gelatine and guiy