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

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.)