Animals: Shark Season

The shark story season opened last week along the New Jersey coast. Two Long Branch mackerel fishermen returned from their nets with three broken oars and a 15-ft. shark of a variety which usually lives off the coast of Greenland.

Along the coast of Texas, the shark story season is open the year round. Last month Secretary of Agriculture Arthur Mastick Hyde, fishing off Port Aransas, hooked, shot and brought ashore an eight-foot female shark weighing 800 Ib. Secretary Hyde went to lunch, leaving his prize prostrate on the pier. Bystanders were startled to see the dead thing quiver, pulsate—and give birth to six baby sharks. One flopped off the pier, swam away.

Soon among Texas fishermen raged a debate: is the shark a fish or a mammal? The answer:

Sharks are selachians (a group of fishlike vertebrates). Their young are hatched from eggs. In some species (e. g. the blue shark) the eggs are fertilized and hatched within the female, the young issuing from egg to sea immediately and feeding independent of the mother, usually in the wake of other fish.