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The Shark of the River and Sea

On the Mississippi River, not far from the town of Alton, Illinois, two commercial fishermen set out their traps. Herbert Cope and Drudge Collins were familiar with this stretch of the river, and they had made a modest living hauling out large catfish and other fish using wood and mesh traps. In 1937, however, something began to raid their traps, busting them up and tearing them asunder. The two fishermen built a large wire fish trap and baited it with chicken. They probably thought it was a muskellunge or a gar that was raiding their fish traps. These big fish often raided their traps, and they occasionally caught them. However, the flesh of these fish was as unmarketable as it was unpalatable. Setting the big trap was a attempt to rid their fishing grounds of a trap raider, not the act of catching a market fish. They set the big wire fish trap and left it in the river.

When they hauled the fish trap up, they were shocked to discover that the trap raider was not a big muskie or a gar at all. In fact they were rather surprised to find that their trap raider had a body like a sturgeon. When they finally got a good luck at their catch, they were even more taken aback. Their trap raider was a shark, the likes of which is more commonly seen in the lower Mississippi and the ocean proper. Alton is roughly 1,750 miles up the Mississippi from the Gulf of Mexico, so it was rather shocking that such a beast would have been the fish trap raider. The shark measured roughly five feet in length, and it weighed 84 pounds. However, it was of a species that can get much larger. The shark that the fishermen caught was small bull shark, one of the few species of shark to tolerate fresh water, and some females of the species have been known to reach weights of 500 pounds.

The River Shark

Rivers throughout the world have a name for a shark that dwells within it. In Southern Africa, it is the Zambezi Shark. In Nicaragua, there is the Lake Nicaragua shark. In India, it is called the Ganges shark. In Australia, it is called the Swan River shark and the Fitzroy creek whaler. All of these sharks are local names for the bull shark, which swims up these river, and in the case of Lake Nicaragua, enter the lake through the rivers that connect the lake to the ocean, jumping rapids like salmon on their way to the lake.

Unlike many other fish, the Bull shark has an ability to adjust its body chemistry to fresh water. The blood of all sharks has to be as salty as the

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