Sharks

Southland Times, Issue 19387, 10 September 1904, Page 2 (Supplement)

Sharks

A DUSKY SOUND NATURALIST^ HABITS OF THE SEA TIGER. INTERESTING OBSERVATIONS. The following- quaint and inter ".'Sting notes on sharks are taken fron. a letter from Mr Richard Henry, of Resolution Island, that seems strangely out oil place in tho dry-as-dust pages of the Laud Report : — The water at Pigeon Island has* been very clear all this month, and as I have to stay at home to attend to m.r captives for the steamer, I have been cultitivating the acquaintance of a sharjk that always comes up for tho refuse ol the fish. I generally give him a fish or! two, because I want his photo., if be -would only keep still for a second', butt lie comes rather late for short exposures, aad he has a great fancy for putting lus tail up and shaking up the water so that the camera cannot see him vjhen he is close enough. Otherwise the wiater is clear enough to see him 40ft deqp. He is a very slow creature, and hunts for tho dead fish just as if he were blind. He does not appear to see it at a distance of 3ft., but his scent is pjerfect, for he is sure to get it, oven if it is buried in seaweed. I saw him playing with the roots of some kelp that was caught in the tramway, which he worried and bit pieces off as if he .bought he was having a feed. So I got a long rod with a piece of rope-yarn a aid a dead fish on the end of it to gi re him something better to play with. Ht was instructive, for it completely disposed of the idea of his being a hunter of any sort. Ho -did not show activity and intelligence,' to catch a cuttle-fish or a prawn unless he ran into them by accident. As for hiiri catching a lively fish, might as well expect him to come ashore and catch a woodhen. I even let him catch hold of my fish, and though ho sometimes bit the head off it, I frequently pulled it out of his mouth while he was fumbling with it, and then he would go on chopping his lips as if he thought he still had it in its mouth and was eating it. He is as slow in his thoughts as he is in his movd-.iients. Anyone could have the same experience it he. would only stay his hand for a Httle while without hurting the shark- He mado it perfectly clear to me that he knew nothing about dealing with live things— . nothing whatever. At first he was a little afraid, and ran away from me when he saw mo very close to him out on the end of the plank, but now he takes no notice, but pays all his attention to scenting out the fish. If I let it lie on tho bottom in one place for a while he will stick to that place and hunt it over time after time, though he might have seen it going away when he was within sft. of iti Of course, he knows by the scent of it that it is dead, and by the same means he may know that there are.no other fish about to take it ; land as his slow intellect cannot understand resurrections he is right enough in thinking that it ought to be there at all events. Some of those dead fish will float while others will sink, and he knows by the scent of them . whether they aro floaters or not, because when I tie a j stone on one to sink it he persistently j looks for it at the surface just over where it is, which he never does with one that sinks of its own accord- He also knows by the scent of it what sort of game he is looking for, because when I tie a good blue-cod to my line he ignores all the scraps and everything else until he gets that first. How he manages this is hard to conceive from our dullscented point of view, but it is equally hard for us to imagine the difference in the scent of a fish J ust recently dead and one that is alive. Yet if such a creaturo as this did not know that slight difference perfectly well he would never get a fish to eat, except by accident, which would Ue a very poor way for him to get a living and -do his duty tn promptly clearing away all the dead things. He is a " perlon " (Notidanus) with tho rounded nose and long slender tail, and is tho sort that always come to eat the grey sharks when we throw dead ones in thie shallow. The perlorf is the slowest in its movements and long ago I knew that none of them were active fish-hunters, because I could tell that by the clumsy way they would come to take my bait. When I would sco one of them coming I could easily pull my bait away from* him, and surely any ordinary fish could get out of tho way ten times faster than I could handle the line. Yet we can read everywhere that sharks are very destructive to other fishes. The sharks tlo not in the least object to fresh water for a while if there is food in it, and it is about as warm as the sea. At the heads of the sounds they must be in it for days in summer time, but I think they do not like it when it is very cold. They do most of their foraging at night and late in the evenings. I believe that all the sharks that I am acquainted with wholly depend on their scent for finding food : and that not one of them ever attempts to catch a live

tasmmmmmmimm^i^mmmtmimmmm^m^^mtmmmmmm fish unless it is sickly and nearly dead. J Those items are easily proved, and 1 they J are the most important in tbeir -history • yet there Is hardly a word about them in books, but plenty of stories about tho swiftness and ferocity of the sharks and their destructivoness to the fish. I "used to believe these stories, but it Was for want of a few minutes' thought. I remember the sharks taking the schna-pper oil our lines at Port Pillip Heads, but now I also remember seeing tho schnapper so thick on tho sand banks that we could not see the bottom through them ; and if the sharks could do so, why did they not go and catch plenty of schnapper for themselves instead of sneaking ono or two oft our lines ? They did not average one a day off my line, and I am sure that did not pay them if they were good fish-hunters. The fact evidently was that they could not catch a fiph for themselves, but were attracted to our lines by the scent of the baits, and of the bleeding fish that had been hooked in the gills. And when a fifth was steering straight for a bait that a fish had just taken and was pulling backwards in distress, it wns an easy matter for him to bite it oIT. That simple thing has originated a whole literature of erroneous shark stories. The sharks will eat whale-food, cuttle-fish, and other slow tliings to keep them ready for the dead fish when they come, but the statement that they are swift hunters is directly opposite to the facts. On the other hand there are a whole host of swift hunters Who will take nothing else but live fish : and yet hardly a word in in the books about their destructiveness, but all the blame laid on tho poor fools of sharks who do not catch a live fish in a generation, unless it ought to be caught. We nro very particular about the species in the books, and their beautiful names, but any sort of habits will do though the latter are by far the most important. If the truth was vary difficult to get in this case there might bo "some excuse, but it is quite easy to get for anyone who would spend a holiday with that object in view. The reason that it is not got on every holiday is through the intense desire to kill the things first and study them afterwards— tho fashion of the collectors. To experiment with a perlon, throw a grey shark in the shallow water, and if there is one in all tlie regions round about he will come up to eat it in the evening, but he does not care for it if it has been long in the water. When I used to go from To Anau to Milford Sound wd always went out fishing for fun, and once when we had very poor sport, Mr Sutherland's^ son-in-law, who knew the place well, said " Let us go over to the CHIT and catch sharks." And we did so. I remember that it was. in very deep water, and so close to tho cliff that the bottom was suro to bo full of fallen rocks, and that we soon got a shark or two, until they bit our hooks oIT. Well, there are several such places about hero that I avoid now when I go fishing, because I always catch {marks there. And when there are strange fish in the buy in summer-time I sometimes go out at night to see what I can catch, hut I only got sharks of some sort, and perhaps a skate or a congercel. Those items imply that many of'the sharks sloop away in deep places -during the day and only go foraging iii the night, or come up when they get a scent of anything freshly killed. When I throw a dish of fish-refuse in the water near evening, a shark will be up for "it in about ton minutes, though he probably has several hundred yards to come. and from a depth of 30 fathoms, which implies that he must have had news of the fallen food almost as soon as it reached the water. Therefore, his scent is as good to him as a wireless telegraph, perhaps more genuine and moro wonderful when wo think how that dishful could send messages in all directions through a waste of waters, and lay lines of scent that he could follow bock with i>omi It would never do to have a creature liko him with keen sight and great activity as woll, for then nothing else could live neur Mm. It would be as bad as having a man with the scent cf a dog as well as his gun. That would be too destructive v combination for "Nature's purposes, for her plans are laid to save the best and let tho others go , and of these slie developed wonderful spocelists in their own departments— the shark's is to scent out tho dead things nnd eat them up at once. The Sydney fishermen ho J ih_ idea tbat the k.ingfish used to run ab.wt** tiling other fish for amusement when they had enough to eat, which vas hard io believe for want of satisfa_.ory evit'tnee ; but no - tho proportion of bitten fish that I sometimes get hn-.-e makes nic think that there may be something in it If the kingfish did so they would be most likely to kill or disable tlie in-erioi-H, which would lie ali In t.rtJer, for it would be the best possible way of reducing any fish that became too numerous. Instead of having a sictyy horde to starve each other, it would' leave the best, and let the others go to the bottom into the shark's department. Then It would be tho shark's business to scent them out. and assist in cleaning up a floor that is under more than half the living things in the world. It would only be a division of luno-r such as we have recently learned to apply in our factoriea. tWinking it quite a new idea, though it may be as old as the hills. We look on the fish aa lower creatures, but if such supervision as tholr's went round there would be fewer ailments and a great deal less misery, over water.