Savage Shore: Life and Death with Nicaragua's Last Shark Hunters - Hardcover

Marriott, Edward

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 080505555X ISBN 13: 9780805055559

Publisher: Metropolitan Books, 2000

Synopsis

A compelling story of sharks, the men who hunt them, and a primeval world on the edge of destruction.

Nicaragua's Atlantic coast is home to the most dangerous of fish, the bullshark, a lethal predator with a fearsome appetite and the only shark that swims in inland waters. Braving Nicaragua's hurricane-torn wilderness of mangrove swamps and brackish lagoons, Edward Marriott joins the last surviving shark fishermen-a fierce ethnic brew of black Caribs, Nicaraguan Indians, and the descants of seventeenth-century English pirates-to sail in a dugout canoe and fish for shark with a handline. As Marriott charts the life of the bullshark, its migrations, its voracious feeding patterns, and the treasures it offers-oil for vitamins, hide for leather, and fins for soup-he reveals lives spent in fear and awe in the shadow of a monster that can sniff fresh blood a mile away. He also tells a tale of human greed: an elemental community, battered by civil war and natural disasters, is now degraded beyond repair to provide bounty for modern-day pirates.

A gripping narrative of risk and adventure, a poignant record of loss and corruption, Savage Shore confirms Edward Marriott as one of our most original and insightful travel writers.

About this title

About the Author

Edward Marriott is the author of The Lost Tribe (Holt, 0-8050-5318-2), a finalist for the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award and a New York Times Best Travel Book. He lives in London.

Reviews

Despite a misleading title that suggests high adventure in Central America, this study of the bull shark actually doubles as a bleak look at the socioeconomics of postrevolution Nicaragua. The only shark that can move from salt water to fresh, the bull shark lives and hunts along the San Juan River, from the Atlantic Coast up to Lake Nicaragua. Ravenous and able to detect a tincture of blood a mile away, carcharhinus leucas is an efficient killing machine. Unfortunately, so was the shark-processing plant that former dictator Anastasio Somoza established in 1969--within a decade of its construction the shark was almost extinct. By the time of Marriott's trip in the late 1990s, a small number of fin dealers and fishermen are the only remnants of a once-thriving industry. Marriott (The Lost Tribe) sees the shark's inland penetration as a metaphor for the country's difficult history as the battleground of centuries of invaders: British, French, Dutch, American. The stories he presents, however, suggest that dictatorship, a failed revolution and a disastrous hurricane are more responsible for the squalor he encounters. There are striking images, such as a mystical old woman's tale of a friend being attacked by a shark at the river's edge or the story of a shark-plant profiteer whose sheepdog rides on pillows in the back of a Mercedes limousine over the hardscrabble streets of San Carlos. Curiously, the latter seems more remarkable than the former in this book, where the real trial of life and death is more likely to come from hunger than a hungry shark. (Mar.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Metropolitan Books
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 080505555X
• ISBN 13: 9780805055559
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288