COLONIAL SHARK FISHERIES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XVI, Issue 5637, 10 December 1879, Page 3

COLONIAL SHARK FISHERIES.

♦ Tiie numerous varieties of voracious sharki which exist in every sea, and which are especially abundant ia the various waters of the tropics (says an English paper), cause more destruction among the useful kinds of fish, upon which we depend bo much for our food supplies than almost any other agency of nature or of man; and they have, perhaps, justly earned the heartiest ill-will of fishermen in all parts of the world. But they are not so entirely without virtues as they appear to be. Most kinds of shark contain large quantities of valuable oil, which, if properly prepared, will rival the produce of the seal or the whale for ordinary commercial uses, and will equal cod-liver oil for medicinal purposes. A considerable fishery, prosecuted, however, in a desultory manner, exists off the west cost of Ireland, where the " basking shark, the largest variety of shark inhabiting British waters, is sought after on account of the quantity of the oil which is obtained from its liver. The seas around our tropical colonies—Fiji, New Zealand, North Australia, the West Indie?, CeyloD, and in Africaandlndia—ought to be the scene of a still more important fishery. In New Zealand the existence of enormous ravenous sharks really constitutes a serious impediment to the prosecution of the native fisheries, and to the possibility of the permanent establishment of salmon in that colony. Some of the sharks—the tiger shark particularly—are sough after by the natives, who value its flesh as an article of food, and keep its large and pearly teeth as personal ornaments. With the annually increasing scarcity of whales, and the corresponding increase in the value of whale oil, these sharks should receive greater attention at the hands of the colonial fishermen. .Regular apparatus—harpoons, guns, lines, and apph'iuces similar to those employed ia the whale fishery—would be required, for a luety shark is endowed with strength far out of proportion even to its often gigantic size. Not only the sharks, but the mote easily killed dolphins and porpoises, which also yield an abundance of very valuable oil, offer a wide field for the enterprise of the colonists ia different parts of the world. There is a secondary advantage in the prosecution of such a fishery for sharks and porpoises in the fact that their destruction is pro lanlo the protection of other nonpredaceous fishes available for food ; and the fishermen need be under no restrictions— often considered by them vexatious—as to over fishing and catching fish out of season.