BIG PROFIT FROM SHARKS.

Taranaki Daily News, 29 October 1921, Page 11

BIG PROFIT FROM SHARKS.

MANY VALUABLE PRODUCTS. With the supply of raw material unlimited, an industry new to America is flourishing at Parker Island, in the Gulf of Georgia. It is ‘the business of catching sharks, and a week’s catch at the beginning of ran to eighty, with an average weight of over a ton each. Nelson MacDonald, who operated the first shark-catching machinery in the island, declares there will never be a shortage, as there are millions in the waters surrounding the island. “In fact, the. further north you go the more, sharks you will find, and from here to Alaska are their feeding grounds,” Mr. MacDonald said. “Taking them from the bottom of the sea is automatic. Norway has a hundred of such industries. The only reel hook for catching them, which works on a swivel, comes from there, and the so-called cod liver oil which invades the markets of the world is really shark liver oil, manufactured in Norway.” Nothing is wasted in a shark plant. There is no finer fish moat than that made from the backs of the sharks. As a fertiliser it is superior to dogfish. The head of the shark is full of glue of a highly valuable quality, and the fins are a much prized Chinese food delicacy, Orientals in America paying as much as 12s 6d a pound for it. The liver contents runs from 60 to 70 per cent, of the finest oil, of which about 10 per cent, is glycerine. Sharks’ teeth are in demand in many parts of the world, and fetch a high' jirice for the manufacture of orna*

meats. What bones there are, and they are few, go into the fertiliser part of the industry. The greatest interest in this new industry is being manifested in the manufacture of hides. Several American companies have been formed, and much research work is being done at present. The shark hides run from an inch in thickness to the consistency of paper in the baby shark. In Seattle they are manufacturing hip boots from shark hides, and they are declared to be completely