For many decades, the economy of the Cayman Islands relied very heavily on the turtling industry. By the 1930's, however, it was evident that stocks were too low for this to continue, and turtlers began to look around for alternatives. Sailing the waters off the coasts of Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Honduras, many had noticed that numerous Nurse Sharks basked there. At this time, the leather industry was keen to use sharkskin, which was durable and scuff-resistant, so Caymanian fisherman began to catch sharks.

At first it was almost easy. Sandbanks provided the ideal location for male sharks to bask, and for female sharks to deposit their young. They would lie in the shallow waters as their eggs matured and hatched inside their bodies before being released. An additional bonus was that the Nurse Shark, with its small mouth and teeth, was less likely to cause injury to the fishermen. It was possible to harpoon them where they lay. As one old fisherman said, "You'd go . . . with dry feet and strike him." Nonetheless, it was a specialized form of fishing, which required particular types of equipment.

Most of the sand cays lacked any resources of their own and the fishermen had to take everything with them that they were likely to need. It usually took several days to load the ship. Nets, harpoons and knives were required, with several 208lb bags of salt to cure the skins. Each skin took at least 3lbs of salt, and each voyage reckoned to provide around 250 skins. The bags had to be carried on "hand-barrels" (barrows) - a short wooden stretcher carried between two men. Canoes were used to ferry everything out to the schooner. Sometimes a second supply boat was needed to get all the supplies to the fishing grounds.

Few men remained with the schooner. Most of the crew were rangers, who took their catboats (often 10 or 12 on a ship), camped on a cay for six weeks or so and fished independently. They took wood to build a small hut, along with Silver Thatch Palm leaves and sticks for the roof and walls. Raised up on stilts, about five feet off the ground, the hut provided a dry and airy roost for hammocks and bunks. Empty oil drums were used as cabooses (ovens), often fuelled by firewood. Fresh water was stored in barrels - though not enough for a six week stay. The men had to rely on catching rainwater using guttering placed around the roof of the hut. Sacks of rice, cornmeal, flour and sugar provided their staple diet, in addition to turtle meat. Shark meat was not considered good eating then. Sharks were scavengers and the flesh from the catch was used simply as bait.

Usually, each catboat had a crew of three men; two to fish and a third to stay on the cay to cook and guard the increasing stock of skins. The fishermen would drive Red Mangrove stakes into the sand of the shallow water and tie baited lines to them. As the shark took the bait, the harpoonist would strike. Should the injured fish try to escape, the harpoon was barbed and attached to a 25 fathom rope (one fathom = six feet), so that the fishermen could run it until the animal was weak enough to pull in. The harpoons were made from metal files which had been heated and reshaped. Over time, as sharks became more scarce, 25-50 fathom nets would be spread out in deeper water to catch them. Some rangers took as many as six of these 10 inch gauge nets, each weighing about 100lbs.

Skinning the sharks was a skilled operation. The skin had to be pierced at a certain point with a razor-sharp knife, then cut from the inside out, otherwise the tough hide would quickly blunt the knife. The tanning industry had specific requirements, and the senior man in each crew was charged with teaching the others from a printed set of instructions. If the job was not done correctly, hard lumps on the skin would pop, spoiling the finish. To be saleable, each skin could only have one "sourspot" and three holes. The skins would then be washed in salt water and hung across a pole slung in the roof of the hut, out of the sun, to dry. Later they were piled on a board, outer side down, and a thick layer of salt was spread across the cut side of each one. There the skins would remain until the schooner returned to collect the crew.

In Cayman, only a few merchants dealt with shark skins: Duncan Merren built a shark house on the waterfront in Grand Cayman, on the spot now called Parrot's Landing. There the skins were stretched across more boards to complete the curing. A skin could stretch by as much as two feet during this process - an important consideration, as the tanning companies paid more for longer skins. In 1932, G. Schaumann & Co. in New York quoted 65 cents for skins 35-49 inches long, and $5.20 for 125-135 inch ones.

One great disadvantage to sharking, however, was the smell - which explained why so few traders would deal with it. Particularly offensive was the smell of shark oil as it drained from the liver. This was the only other shark product to be exploited in the Cayman Islands and it was done by just one man. Osley Webster was a particularly skilled fisherman, catching the local Tiger Shark with lines from the shore in front of Arch's shipyard. One day, when cutting out a shark's liver, Osley badly cut his finger. Without pausing to wash off the oil, he bandaged it and got on with his work. A day or two later he noticed that the wound had healed extremely quickly. Later, young Reg Parsons' black eye also responded rapidly to applications of the evil smelling oil, and Osley went into the business of bottling and selling the substance. He may have added a few other curative ingredients, but the panacea still smelt awful. As Lindbergh Eden said, "You could smell shark oil from a month away. " Osley was highly regarded in the community, but the youngsters could not resist giving him the nickname "Sweetness". Yet the oil was a success and for a time was exported, via Jamaica, throughout the Caribbean.

Shark stocks were soon too depleted to be profitable for anyone. What had been plentiful in 1931 was almost exhausted by 1940 - the result of taking large numbers of breeding females. The Cayman Islands Government and merchants tried negotiating fishing rights in Cuban and Bahamian waters, with little success. Sharking declined and eventually died out.

(Quotes courtesy of the Cayman Islands National Archive)

Last Updated: 23 Nov 2011