SHARKS TAMED

Greymouth Evening Star, 18 April 1938, Page 8

SHARKS TAMED

NATIVE MEN’S KISSES. SAN FRANCISCO, March 14. A husky Catholic missionary, who has been in the Fiji Islands for ten years, has returned to New York with photographic proof of hair-raising adventures, including one in which he saw the natives capture sharks by kissing them. The Rev. A. J. Laplante, S.M., an American-born Marist, for the past decade has been on the island of VitiLevu, largest in the Fiji group, with 16 other Catholic missionaries. During that time he took a. complete motion-picture record of the natives and many of their adventures. “Twice a year,” he said, “the Fiji natives of Viti-Levu spend days in preparation for their semi-annual fishing expedition—vara wai or combing the river. They build a. huge tennis-like net of woven matting, about 300 ft. long and 10ft. wide. It is stretched

across a shark-infested river by men and women who work shoulder deep in the water, and it is held there until the male members of the tribe drive tho sharks and other fish into the net. Then it is slowly pulled toward shore and here takes place a phenomenon I . cannot explain. "Six picked men of the tribe, wade into the water barehanded, grab sharks 3ft. and 4ft. long by the tail, lift them out of the water and kiss them on ( their upturned bellies. The sharks stop wiggling instantly when kissed. The natives lay them down side by side on the beach and they never move again.” His motion pictures bear out the story, and he added: “I don’t know «■ how they do it, but among the natives it is taken for granted that once a shark is kissed upside down that is the • end of it,” he said.