ABOUT SHARKS.

Colonist, Volume LI, Issue 12497, 25 March 1909, Page 3

ABOUT SHARKS.

The great peril and pest of tropical waters is the shark. Never so long as he lives will the writer (says the "N.Z. Herald") forget his first experience of a shark. Years ago he was staying at Ormond, on the Atlantic coast of Florida, the same beach where the great motor speed contests are now held. Early on the first morning of his arrival he went down to bathe, and passing through the breakers on the bar, swam out to sea. Suddenly the familiar triangular fin appeared not. fifty yards away, and then the whole back of a' shark showed through the : broken water. It was not a very large shark, and probably quite harmless, but the writer, broke his own and most other existed swimming records back to the bar. ■..'.■ ; ,-"/ : - Yet a shark's bark, so to. speak, is worse than its bite. There has never been a case of a man being taken by a shark on the Atlantis coast of Florida north of Biscayne Bay; and though the . gulf . fairiy swarms with tlie ugly brutes, it is safe enough to bathe in a crowd and near. shore. But the authorities will not let you dive off the end of a steamship pier, on that coast, and rightly so. Very large sharks are sometimes caught in British waters. . Five j'ears ago fishermen from Kinsale found in their nets a blueshark ten feet three ii-ches in- length. Occasionally a blue shark, is seen or caught on the Cornish coast; but they are : very rare, and certain alarmist letters which, have appeared in London daily papers on- the subject of- sharks and bathers are quite. unjustified' by facts; ' '■' The . strangest shark; story which" ever ., came to. the writer's: ears was of - a shark that charged ' a ' steamer. This; ■was in Queen .Charlotte's sound, and an account of the incident .appeared in a Vancouver paper. The captain' of the. steamer; which was a -small craft of only "fifty tons or so, saw theshark on the surface on the port bow, and could not resist the temptation of taking a shot at it with his rifle. ■ ; .'"-'.- ' ' He hit the mark, whereupon the monster— said to have been fully 20 fet in length — deliberately chargedthe steamer. The boat quivered from stem to stern, and the. captain said -afterwards that it was like striking: a rock. .' ;; " . After this display of temper Master Shark had had enough! of it, and^ sank out of sight. . : -