Arizona Republic from Phoenix, Arizona • Page 34

Shark attacks, whether authentic or false alarms, inevitably make the headlines, and from Australia comes a scientific record showing that the menace of the man-eater is growing id 22 -A. '7 i By Dr. Frank Thou fi 6 tiudgtr. American Museum ot Natural History largest of the shark tribe. A full-sized tchale this one, which was harpooned in Acapulco shark not a man-eater.

In the upper This kind is sometimes accused of attacking man. OOKING down. I swamid the foam and splashing, the head of a shark with my knee in its mouth, shaking it as a puppy would shake a stick in attempting to take it away from someone I freed my right leg. only to have the monster bite me immediately thereafter on the left one." Mr. Hastie broke loose and backed ashore.

Ilie whole thing happened in 10 seconds, but so severely had he beenbitten that his friends had much ado to get him to the army hospital at Fort Moultrie, where more than 30 stitches had to be inserted. He was transferred sr. mm to the Riverside Infirmary, in Charleston, where he remained a patient for two weeks before the wounds healed. Both the week before and the week after the attack on him. specimens of sharks eight feet long were captured within 100 yards of the scene of the accident.

One of Mr. Hastie's friends who witnessed the attack said the shark that bit him was easily eight feet long. The marks on the bitten knee indicate a mouth diameter of 10 inches, which is a fair fit for a shark of that size. The captured specimens were identified as the yellow or cub shark, usually considered to be a West Indian rather than a South Atlantic species. A second victim was attacked while standing tn the water, and so badly bitten that more than 100 stitches had to be taken in his left knee and leg.

A Negro, who came to his rescue and helped him ashore, stated that he "saw about six feet of the fish but didn't stop to observe closely." In all. Mr. Burton lists five cases of shark bite from the immediate vicinity of Charleston, which he believes to be "absolutely authentic." In addition, he records two "semi-authentic" cases. In both these cases the victims were women. Their injuries were real enough; but nobody actually saw the sharks, which leaves a slight margin ot chance that some other vora cious sea creature might have made the attacks.

All shark attacks recorded in American waters have apparently been by sharks scarcely big enough to do more than disable their victims. They are reported to be eight- or ten-footers rarely larger. The real villain in the shark world, the true man-eating white shark of the tropical seas, reaches a length of 30 feet, and can easily kill and devour a grown man in a few slashing bites. Linnaeus, the great Swedish naturalist of the 18th century, credited this species, and not a whale, with being the "great fish" which in the Bible narrative "swallowed up Jonah" and kept him within, undigested, for three days and nights. Service) SHARK scares are always good tor frontpage space in the papers in summer.

There is something fascinating in the terror of those rows of razor-edged, three-cornered white teeth that holds the eye and the imagination. One school of psychologists might speculate that there is a kind of mental evolutionary throw-back about it all, to an ancestral state when Teeth meant Death, and being eaten afterwards, as teeth still mean death and devourment to myriads of animals today. Whatever may be the cause, there is no doubt about the effect. We gobble up shark stories in the newspapers, even as we imagine the sharks would like to gobble us up. There is nothing at all new in the idea of a fish biting a man, but it is nevertheless sure-fire news.

Such fascination there ii in the thought ot attack by a shark, that sharks get much more newspaper notice than they really merit on the basis of their own exertions. Let a bather snag himself on a nail on a piece ot drifting timber, or sit down on a broken bottle in shallow water, or even see something he takes to be the sinister back fin of a shark cutting the water, and he (or she) yells shark-and-bloody-murder. And it makes good "copy" for the papers and sprouts some more gray hairs for the managers of beach resorts. it even when you have "played down" the iilse alarms of shark attacks, there remains a quite substantial and painful residue of true and authentic cases. Sharks do attack human beings, and while they seldom carry the attack to a fatal outcome they usually maul and bite their victims so badly that weeks in the hospital and dozens of surgical stitches are neces sary before thoy can walk again.

FROM the ROM the warmer beaches ot both world's ends come stories of well- authenticated shark attacks. It is winter now in Australia, but when they were having their summer, last December and January, the shark situation received the attention of a careful student of marine life "down under," Gilbert Whitley. He reported his findings in the Victorian Naturalist. He divided his records into 10-yeai periods. The number of authentic shark attack reports in the decade 1912-1921 was I 3 in the following decade.

1 922-1931. it jumped to 45, and in the three-year period 1932-1934 there were 16 well-supported records. At this rate. the 1932-1941 decade might be expected to run up a record of somewhere near 60 serious shark-bites. Mr.

Whitley does not believe tha? Australian sharks are becoming wickeder, or necessarily more numerous. It is beach bathers, potential shark victims, who are more numerous, he suggests. As remedies, lu-offers the construction ot "shark fences" enclosing bathing beaches, or where this is not practicable, the use of lookouts on specially-built high towers or even in aircraft, to warn bathers ashore when Old Toothy is detected in the offing. On American shores, shark attacks seem to have occurred most frequently in the Florida region. They are usually blamed on the notorious Caribbean sharks, wandering north ward out of their true bailiwick.

They would not in any case have to wander very far. how- ever, for Havana harbor is full ot sharks sometimes credited with assisting in the disappearing of too-troublesome revolucionistas. Farther north, it is difficult to obtain any really well-authenticated shark-bite records. There was, to be sure, a major shark scare oft the New Jersey coast back in 191 6. much to the distress of Atlantic City and neighboring beach towns.

But the actual shark damage (if sharks really caused it) was multiplied manifold by terrified imaginations. Sharks of man-eating size and disposition may be set down as extremely exceptional in northern waters. 1VIHAT the northern boundary of really vicious sharkdom may be is still a matter of some doubt. For long it was claimed that such sharks never appeared north of Florida, but recently the director of the Charleston, S. Museum, E.

Milby Burton, made a critical investigation of all the recent cases of shark attack he could find. He limited his inquiry to victims whom he could locate and interview personally, and reported what they told him in the Scientific Monthly. Two of them consented to have photographs of their tooth-scarred legs published in corroboration of their testimony. Perhaps the most vivid account, and certainly the most vivid scars, were offered by a youth najned Drayton Hastie. He stated that while bathing at the north end of Morris island, at the mouth of Charleston harbor, he saw what he took to be a shark fin and swam out to investigate.

The fin had disappeared, so Mr. Hastie concluded he was mistaken. Photo courtes Ur b. Here is a "Utile" specimen of the whale shark, shark vcould be more than half again as big as Harbor, Mexico. For all its size, this kind of vhoto is a 12-foot tiger shark taken in Ausbalta.

"Nevertheless, he said. "I did not like the idea of swimming with sharks all around, so I sat down in about three feet of water. I was almost certain that in such shallow water I would be safe from anything large enough to bite. "I felt a swerve of water, which was fol lowed immediately by an impact which brought me to my senses. Something clamped dowr on my right leg.

I was aware of a tearing pain up and down my leg, and I was beinp pulled outward by something which seemed to have the power of a horse. ,2 i km. DUT even this monster drops to mere mack-erel size as compared with a whale-sized species that swam the seas only a few million years ago. This giant is known only by its teeth for shark skeletons are made principally of cartilage or "gristle," which does not form fossils But these teeth, which are quite abundant in fossil deposits, are often a good sis inches from base to point 1 By companion with modern shark teeth, they indicate a spread of five or six feet, and an over-all body length of 90 feet, quite as large as the biggest living whales. Of existing sharks, the largest are the whale sharks of the tropics and the basking sharks, which also reach the higher latitudes.

sharks harpooned so daringly by the Irish fishermen in the recent film feature. "Man of Aran," are basking sharks. Size limits el these giants are not as sharply known as they might be, but it appears probable that they both reach lengths approaching 40 feet Fortunately for the seafarer's peace ot mind, neither, of these giant species is a man eater. Their teeth are small, though numerous, and they seem to be content with ordinary prey fish, squid and the like. Finding human bones, clothing, in shark's stomach does not necessarily convict the shark of man-eating proclivities.

Almost any shark that is large enough, and hat strong enough jaws and teeth, will eat the bodiei of drowned persons, but only a few kind? ol sharks have the courage or viciousness to attack a living man. Dr. E. W. Gudger of the American Mu eum of Natural History, a widely-known cialist on fishes, states that probably most man-eaters and man-maulers belong to the genu known by the forbidding name of Larcharta Tiger-sharks are under some suspicion, and it Australia the mackerel-sharks also; but the case against them is apparently not as yet quite conclusive.

Sometimes sharks' receive unjust blame fot the attacks of the barracuda, a five- or six-foot fish with the jaws, teeth and truculent disposition of the muskellunge of the fresh-water lake of the north. tCopjugat. U3S, by Every Week Alaffula and Selene.