Posted on 08/31/2019 7:12:38 PM PDT by Capt. Tom
Just some old background info. -Tom
Back in the Eighties, I was partying down in Point Judith with friends, and a crowd of people were talking excitedly out in the street. When we asked what was going on, they said someone had caught a white shark and it was at a dock up the street.
We went over to take a look, and by the time we got there, the shark had been completely butchered and the removed jaws were sitting on the sidewalk with a guy standing inside the bloody jaws! That was the first time I had ever seen with my own eyes anything like that, and I was able to examine it closely...the teeth were huge, and were obviously sharp enough to cut when I ran my finger lightly along the edge. Each tooth was just a bit smaller (by maybe a quarter to a third) than the triangle I could make with my thumb and forefinger from each hand held together to make a triangle.
Pretty amazing to see.
But what was equally impressive was a pectoral fin some Asian guy had finagled from the corpse...it was longer than my arm. He was sitting with it on the curb trying to saw through it with a huge knife with a round end, with no success. He would saw unsuccessfully for a minute, then using the curb next to him as a whet stone would try to put some kind of edge on it, and then would try again to saw. But that pectoral fin was enormous!
By the way, when we got there, the carcass was nowhere to be seen. Only the removed jaws and that pectoral fin! I always wondered if they just rolled the thing back into the water, or if someone had to tow it out somewhere...
Bull shark?
To get an idea of the effectiveness of a sharks jaws, take a piece of toast and take a full bite out of It, and look at the miniscule bite size a full grown human has.- Tom
There have not been verified catches of Bull sharks in Mass. including fishing tournaments.
Some shark species have been claimed to be bulls but IDS by knowledgeable people have found them to be other species. - Tom
I had read about the 1916 attacks, but have never read about this case. Interesting. I live hundreds of miles from the Ocean on the West coast so I don’t see it more than once a year if that.
But I do remember my late Father, a champion swimmer at high school in the 1930s, taking me swimming offshore when I was a boy. He taught me to swim well when I was very young, and we would go way out beyond the breakers and then swim about a quarter mile along the coast before coming back ashore.
I thought nothing of sharks in those days even though I spotted a few 3 foot sand sharks near shore a time or two. Then when the movie “Jaws” came out when I was 25 and everything changed. Not to mention all the Shark specials on TV since then. Now you couldn’t get to wade more than ankle deep in the Ocean.
The shark either came up Buzzards Bay or down the Cape Cod Canal. My guess is it came down the canal. That pier is in a straight line from the canal to the SW.
White sharks seem to be numerous off California. They were a protected species, but restrictions on taking them were relaxed five years ago. Apparently, sport fishermen can take them but commercial fisheries are still prohibited from doing so.
Thanks!! Still interested...if you recall we shared this interest not long ago!
Climate Change causing it ?
‘Climate change’ apparently has been going on for centuries to cause THIS
No doubt Jaws got into the thinking of many people.
One of the people we regularly took out on fishing charters was an avid diver who lived in Truro and dove in Provinceown.
He stopped diving there; when a few years ago he had a white shark glide by him while he was gathering lobsters.
He is doing his diving now in the winter months. -Tom
They rebounded in the area when Gov. Moonbeam protected the sea lions and seals. Now they are all over the place and are the natural food for shark. Hence, the increase in sharks.
rwood
Those 1916 shark attacks would not have made much of an impression on New Englanders because of limited coverage in the local papers beyond the immediate area that the newspapers covered.
In 1916 no TV, and not much radio information either.
Not like today where news from Florida and Texas is prominent, no matter where you live.-Tom
Oh Wow. I grew up in Detroit but Cape Cod was our summer vacation. I never went out as far as you did! That was before Jaws. Yet I spent the rest of those summers waterskiing in a lake. I just never would have gone out where you did to swim. Such courage.
Thank you!!
THANKS for the info.
Aside from the local press in NJ, only NYC & Boston newspapers spent much time covering the 1916 attacks in NJ.
Until today, even with my sincere interest in sharks, I’d NOT heard of the 1936 fatality.
Yours, TMN78247
I went to the cape every summer since high school for about 30 years.
Ive never set foot in the North Atlantic. I hate the beach.
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