Savage Shore: Life and Death with Nicaragua's Last Shark Hunters Hardcover - 2000

From the publisher

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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