07 - Within the Deep by R. Cadwallader Smith - Tigers of the Sea

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Lessen seven of Within the Deep by R. Cadwalad or Smith.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain Lessen seven.
Tigers of the Sea. The monsters of the shark family,
fortunately for us, live in warm seas and so are
not often found near the shores of Great Britain. But

(00:21):
our seas contain smaller sharks of various kinds, and in
greater numbers than most people imagine. Sharks are fierce hunters.
Many a poor sailor or diver has been torn to
pieces and devoured by these ravenous tigers of the deep.
Some sharks are of great size and immense power. They

(00:41):
are by far the largest of all living fish, and
no animal in the whole kingdom of animals owns such
a terrible death trap of a mouth as the shark.
It is in some kinds of shark armed with seven
rows of teeth with keen edges and points. Sometimes a
shore ark follows a steamer in the open sea day

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after day, waiting for whatever may chance his way, and
it is astonishing what strange objects he will swallow. These
monsters are often caught on a hook baited with a
lump of meat, and are hauled to the steamer's deck,
one shark was found to contain all the rubbish that
have been pitched overboard, tin cans, a bundle of old coats,

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a piece of rope, old bones, and so on. What
a fierce hunger must have driven the shark to swallow
such a meal as that. Before we look at some
of these fierce creatures whom everyone dislikes, we will say
a word for them. Nature meant them to be scavengers
to clean up the sea, and this they do. Dead

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and decaying flesh is a danger, and the shark, ever hungry,
clears it away quickly. Now and again fishermen bring a
big shark to port and hang him in the market,
not for sail, but as a show. The blue shark
is the one most often displayed like this. See how
his mouth is set well under the head, as in

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all sharks, and notice the shape of the body. It
tells of speed and strength in the water. Its pointed,
tapering form reminds one of the racing yacht. What is
this fierce fellow doing so near our coast? He is
often found off cornwall, too often, thinks the fisherman. This

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shark comes to seek the same prey as the fisherman.
The shoals of mackerel and pilchard a cousin of the herring.
Where the shoals go, the blue shark follows. The silly mackerel,
all crowded together have no chance to escape their awful foe.
They are nearly as helpless as a flock of sheep
with a tiger in their midst If the shark comes

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across a massive mackerel or pilchards in a net, he
looks on them as a fine feast. Dashing at them,
he tears the net to pieces, swallowing lumps of netting
with great mouthfuls of fish small wonder. The fisherman detests
this savage visitor, which causes him such serious loss of
time and money. He naturally looks on sharks as useless vermin,

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to be destroyed whenever possible. The fox shark or thresher
is another fierce visitor to these shores. This savage hunter
comes after the herrings, pilchers, and sprats. It is said
to hunt these useful little fish in a strange way.
As you know, they travel in shoals. The thresher swims

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rapidly round and round. Them. Nearer and nearer it comes
to the unlucky little fish, and they crowd together, huddling
up in a helpless mass. The thresher adds to their
panic by threshing the water with its terrible tail, and then,
as you can well imagine, it dashes at them and
devours any enormous mill half the length of the thresher

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is tail. Not long ago there was landed at one
of our fishing ports a thresher shark of half a ton,
its tail being over ten feet in length. Even the
great whale has reason to fear the fierce lashings of
that long whiplike weapon. Our commonest sharks are those small
ones known as dogfish, which you can often see at

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any fish market. They are good to eat, though not
used much as food. Though small in size, they are
large in appetite and fierce in nature. Like savage dogs.
They hunt in packs, waging war against the whiting, herring
and other fish. There are several kinds of these small sharks,

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known as spur dog, smooth hound, greater spotted and lesser
spotted dogfish, and toupe, and you will hear fishermen call
them by such names as rig robin huss and shovel
nose dislike sharks, the dogfish among them. All those creatures
like the cormorant, seal and shark, which catch fish for breakfast, dinner,

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and supper, are rivals off the fishermen. He often pulls
up his line to find but a part of a
fish on the hook, the rest was snatched by a dog.
At times his nets are torn by these nuisances when
they attack the catch off fish, or his lines come
up from the deep all tangled round and round a

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writhing dogfish which had swallowed the baited hook. We come
now to those flat sharks, whose flesh you may have tasted.
No sharks are nice looking, but these flat ones, the
skates or rays, are really hideous. Many of them are
of great size and strength, and armed with spines on

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their bodies as well as teeth in their ugly jaws.
They have broad, flat bodies, with wide wings and a long,
thin tail. The whole shape reminds you of a kite,
and you would hardly know the ray or skate as
the shark's first cousin. Yet it is only a shark
with flattened body and whose side fins are so large

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that they spread out like fleshy wings. The mouth is
on the under part, as it is in all sharks.
These flattened sharks must be a terror to their neighbors.
We shall see in our next lesson what strange weapons
are used in the battles of the fish. The rays
or skates have their share of spines, stings, and poisons.

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One glance at their shape tells you that speed is
not their strong point. If they wish to eat fast
swimming fish, and they often do, they must use cunning.
The skate, being sandy colored and flat, is nearly invisible
as it lies on the bed of the sea. There
it lurks, waiting for the first unwary fish. A sudden spring,

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and its wide body smothers its unlucky victim. Skates also
flap their way slowly over the ocean floor looking for
a dinner. They can eat shellfish and are fitted with
teeth suited to the work of crushing such hard fare.
But as we have seen, they have also the shark's
love of eating other fish. These skates are the only

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members of the shark family that we value as food.
You can see skates of several kinds in the fish market.
They go by such names as thornback ray, blue skate,
spotted ray, starry ray, cuckoo ray, long nosed skate, and
sting ray. Exercises one of what use are sharks? Two?

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How does the thresher shark hunt its prey? Three? Give
the names of several dogfish and rays. Four What is
the food of the skate and how is it obtained?
End of lesson seven And