TROPICAL SEA PERILS

Evening Star, Issue 18094, 9 October 1922, Page 7

TROPICAL SEA PERILS

GIANT SHARKS AND SWORDFISH. At an inquest held recently at Hull it was stated that a bather had apparently lost his life through having been wounded by a fish. The _ barracoota fish that recently killed 1 Miss Dorothy M'Olatchie off the Florida coast is one of the most voracious of deep-sea ash. Every man’s hand is against it, and parties go out spearing it with the “grains,” a three-pronged spear, ot which the handle is detached when once the barbs arc driven homo. Tropical seas are lull of tenors toi the bather. There are not only sharks, but also .sting rays, electric rays, and swordfish, as well as the octopopi. Sharks, of course, are by iar tho worst of all sea pests, and all warm seas are full of them. Oddly enough, on the east, the Atlantic, coast of Florida, bathing is safe enough, but on the Gulf coast it is madness to enter The Gulf is haunted by the so-called tiger shark, as savage a brute as exists, though not by any means one ot tho largest of its kind. Of the really largo sharks—and some grow to a tremendous sure—the majority fire harmless. One of tho largest is tho basking shark. One of these sharks killed off the Isle of Wight was 28ft long and weighed about six tons. , 1 The only dangerous individual among the giant sharks is (says a writer in ,the ‘Daily Mail’) the Carcharodon rondeleti, a monster 40ft in length, which is provided with the most terrible teeth and can swallow a man at a gulp. Luckily it is very rare. Tho hammerhead shark, the head of which is shaped like a hammer, witn the eyes on the striking surfaces, is a nightmare of hideousness, and its groat jaws are provided with no fewer than four separate rows of triangular teeth. Some years ago a 10ft specimen uas killed in Carmarthen Bay. Happily, however, tho brute seldom comes so far north as the British Isles. Iho hammerhead is a real man-eater. The “thresher” is the shark which is said to attack whales. It is a big shark, and one 14ft long was taken oft Plymouth, and another of the same size off Dawlish. .Tho “thresher lives, however, principally on hen mgs. The swordfish grows to 10ft m length, ' with a sword more ■ than a yard long, and there are many cases on record of its attacking boats. Said to be the swiftest thing that sunns, its great weight and ferocity make it a dangerous foe. . . As for tho ‘whip, or sting ray, this unpleasant creature has a great barbed spine in its whip-like tail, and a blow from this produces a terrible and generally poisoned wound.