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

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com 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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Holt Paperbacks; Reprint edition (March 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805055568
• ISBN-13: 978-0805055566
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #355,475 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Insightful Travel Writing, March 10, 2000

By	Erik Gauger "notesfromtheroad.com" (Los Angeles, CALIF) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Savage Shore: Life and Death with Nicaragua's Last Shark Hunters (Hardcover)

Good travel writers are few and far between. This book reads fast. In addition to a few nightmares about the darkness of jungly places and the preying of freshwater sharks, we have learned alot from his risky and insightful ecological journey.

We learn the richness of Nicaragua, Mosquitia, and a compelling history of Miskito and Creole life on the Atlantic Coast of Central America. I rank this book among the very finest of all of the travel literature out there.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not all sharks swim, August 23, 2001

By	"michaeleve" (Miami, Florida) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

A few of the human kind can be found in places like Bluefields, Nicaragua, where if this book had instead been set in the wild west of the US, the only proper name for some of the residents would be desperados. Although conditions are definitely frontier-like the characters are very 20th century, and uniquely Nicaraguan. Interspersed throughout SAVAGE SHORE are referrences to, and the occasional crossing of paths with, Sandinistas, Contras, Colombian drug dealers and the odd modern day pirate. These characters though are not even the central focus, but they certainly add to what is already a fascinating and well written travelogue, cultural study, nature journal, and critique on human greed, economic exploitation, and political chaos.

The central characters are not men at all but bull sharks that live, breed, and hunt in the Caribbean waters of Nicaragua's east coast. It is the "most willful and aggressive of all tropical sharks" and what makes it unique and worthy of a book, is that "like no other shark, it possessed the ability to cross from salt water to freshwater, hunting far upriver". That means that the bull shark can be found up the Escondido river near Bluefields or more impressively, 60 miles up the San Juan river, all the way to Lake Nicaragua. It is as the author says "shark where shark should not be - in fresh water, on human territory."

The book tells the tale of this shark and the men who hunt it, as they have for generations, - bravely, in open dugout canoes with hand held lines. The sharks are hunted for their body oils, the fins are used to make soup and the skin is tanned into leather. Poverty means that resource management is non-existent and overfishing means that the shark itself may soon be gone from its last great freshwater holdout - lake Nicaragua.

Fear and greed, the author says, are the two most common human emotions the bull shark elicits. Perhaps it's fitting then that this also best describes the pervasive feeling that one gets from this rough and tumble area. History has a part to play. In the 17th century Bluefields was the capital of the British protectorate - the Mosquito Coast - which stretched the length of Nicaragua's Caribbean shoreline to Puerto Cabeza in the north, and beyond into what is now Honduras. This explains how a town with an Anglo name exists in a Latin country. Slaves from Jamaica were brought in and their descendants are now the large, patois/english speaking Creole population. Co-existence with the Miskito, Sumu, and Ramu indians has not always been peaceful but the natives of this area have at times pulled together, usually in the face of some external threat, whether natural as in the many hurricanes that have devastated the area, or man made as in the political tribalism and battles between Sandinistas and Contras.

This story of sharks, at sea and on land, makes the place most appropriately named SAVAGE SHORE. Yet in an irony fitting for this book, the area is also the focal point of Nicaragua's tourism industry.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Marriot is an A-1 travel writer no doubt..., June 27, 2001

By	Jim Parsons (Woodburn, Oregon) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Savage Shore: Life and Death with Nicaragua's Last Shark Hunters (Hardcover)

Clever writing by a young author who obviously did some research into not only the Bull Shark but also the sometimes enigmatic Nicaraguan culture, history and politics. After traveling to all but one of the Central American countries and working in Honduras near the Mosquito Coast for over 2 years I found his descriptions to be most accurate. Like most travel writers he does some ad-libing to make it more interesting, but hey that sells more books! His greatest gift seems to be his ability to bring characters to life. As I read I could really picture what they looked like and how they acted. Believe me, there are some interesting characters in the 3rd world jungle countries! I had to chuckle when throughout his travels in Central America people thought he must be American. Marriot shrugged it off, almost offended at times it seems. Being English or American in La Moskitia would be an advantage for sure, but in the interior being American can be otherwise. If Mr. Marriot reads this I hope he will respond personally for it would be a real pleasure to share stories of our different adventures in Central America. Someday I will write a book of my own adventures very similar to Marriot's but they will be short stories, for I had no real mission while I was there besides working and living "La Vida Loca." Marriot has piqued my interest enough to buy his 1st book "The Lost Tribe." Until then, escribisteis bien vos!