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

Marriott, Edward

3.76

51 ratings by Goodreads

9780805055559: Savage Shore: Life and Death with Nicaragua's Last Shark Hunters

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 080505555X ISBN 13: 9780805055559

Publisher: Metropolitan Books, 2000

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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.

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Review:

The great white gets all the press, but the shark most feared by people around the world is the bull shark, a fish of warm seas that even penetrates fresh water, swimming up rivers and into lakes. In Nicaragua, fishermen still pursue these unusual predators by dangerous, traditional means. Acclaimed travel writer Edward Marriott takes us into the brackish realm of the bull shark and the men who tackle it with their dugouts and handlines:

The coastal and river people hunted the shark for its fins and for its oil, feared and revered it; every village had had family taken in its jaws. It was shark where shark should not be--in fresh water, on human territory.

Along the way we learn about Nicaragua's spicy cultural stew of indigenous Miskitos, Spanish conquerors, and Africans; about a country torn between Sandinistas and Contras; and about a creature that is quickly disappearing despite its fierce disposition. Readers with a scent for blood will not be disappointed--but the mythology of shark attacks on humans is perhaps even richer than the true-crime variety; indeed, Marriott infuses the country with a Marquez-like quality of magic that seems appropriate to a lake shark.

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.

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