Three-quarters of the way up Norway’s west coast, the islands of the Lofoten archipelago rear out of the Atlantic, towering mightily from the deep sea. They are the spectacular setting for Shark Drunk, in which Morten Strøksnes, a journalist, and his friend Hugo Aasjord, an artist, set out to catch a Greenland shark.
This singular fish lives for centuries. It grows to more than 20 feet long, passing hundreds of years at enormous depths preying on sleeping seals. (That seals nap on the seabed is one of Shark Drunk’s surprises.) It is inedible: a toxin in the meat induces a fatal inebriation, hence the book’s title. The beast’s eyes glow luminous green, attracting finger-long parasitic worms that hang from its eyeballs, rendering it blind.
He describes water molecules connected by hydrogen bonds as dancers changing partners billions of times a second
Related: Our fear of sharks is tinged with subconscious guilt | Philip Hoare
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