Shark

On the way to gulping $150 million for its makers, the movie Jaws is spattering finny largesse all over the pop landscape. Shark teeth, selling for as much as $100 apiece unmounted, have bitten off a sizable hunk of the gimcrackery market in the form of necklaces, earrings and bracelets; Boston's New England Aquarium even sells small molars for 25-c- each. Fishing-gear dealers report a surging demand for the extra-heavy rigs--ranging in price from $200 to $1,000--that are needed to land the beasts on beach or boat. Shark-hunting clubs are booming.

The ultimate shudder, rumored to be offered by a West Coast travel agency, is a $4,000 shark special to Australia that climaxes when the tourist is lowered into the ocean in a steel cage, which then is supposedly attacked by a slavering great white.

When Jawsmania subsides, however, it may leave a welcome and lasting legacy on U.S. shores. Largely as a result of the book and the film, shark meat is slowly but steadily finding a place on the dinner table. The toothsome steaks still are often sold to the unsuspecting under such fishy pseudonyms as "steakfish," "grayfish" and "whitefish"; the idea of dining on shark has traditionally been about as attractive to many Americans as eating fried tarantula or sting ray in aspic. But enterprising fish dealers and restaurateurs have found that they can overcome this revulsion by getting people to put shark to the taste test.

Succulent Dish. A pioneer shark promoter is New Orleans' Preston Battistella, 50, one of the biggest fish wholesalers on the Eastern seaboard. In 1973, when he started handling shark meat, Battistella sold 60,000 Ibs.; in 1975 his volume was more than 300,000 Ibs. His biggest breakthrough came after he invited the New Orleans school board to lunch and served them "fish Creole." When he identified the succulent dish as shark, selling for only 75-c- per lb., v. $3.50 per lb. for pompano or snapper, he landed a three-month contract to sell the school system 40,000 Ibs. Says Orleans Parish Food Buyer Jeanne Elliott: "It's about as popular as spaghetti and meat sauce or veal parmigiana," adding, "Of course, we just call shark 'seafood' on the menus." Battistella is also successfully selling frozen shark fillets (at $1.32 per lb.) in New Orleans supermarkets, and reports that a food processor is testing a shark sandwich spread.

There are honorable reasons for shark to make it to the menu. The firm white meat resembles swordfish but is slightly more chewy, and has a scallop-like texture. Easy to clean and butcher, it is almost oil-free (sharks store all their fat in their liver), is rich in vitamins and minerals and contains almost as much protein as canned tuna. Shark is a highly esteemed food in the Mediterranean, the West Indies, the Orient (indeed, delicately flavored shark's fin soup is a standard dish in U.S. Chinese restaurants) and Latin America, where savory dried and smoked shark meat is known as bacalao de tiburon. In England, vast quantities of dogfish, a small shark, are sold in fish-and-chips shops.

In the U.S., some restaurateurs contend that shark may become as popular as Mali-Mali, a dolphin dish that has become a prized delicacy in Hawaii and the West. Miami Entrepreneur William Doherty, who has built a $275,000 trawler-factory to fish for shark, calls it "the product of the future." Its fate will depend largely on the success of the strategy that U.S. restaurateurs are using to overcome the stigma of shark: capitalizing on it. At Gatsby's restaurant in Atlanta's American Motor Hotel, for example, Catering Director George Gold promotes his baked mako by putting 16-in. stuffed sharks on diners' tables, along with a card announcing JAWS: FOR A JAWFUL REVENGE. A fashionable Indian restaurant in Manhattan, Nirvana on Rooftop, draws attention to its shark curry by keeping three small sharks in a tank. It does not have to warn customers against squeezing the charmers.

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