# Sharks and the Atlantic Slave Trade > Black's Encyclopedia — the sourced record of Black American life. > Portal: History & Migration · Status: In review · Revised: July 11, 2026 · Revisions: 1 > Canonical: https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/sharks-and-the-atlantic-slave-trade ## Questions this record answers - Did sharks modify their migratory behavior and feeding patterns based upon the Atlantic slave routes? ## Summary Sharks did follow slave ships and were attracted by the bodies and waste thrown overboard, but modern evidence is not strong enough to say with certainty that their species-wide migratory routes were permanently “changed” by the Atlantic slave trade. Historical accounts from sailors, captains, and abolitionists consistently describe sharks shadowing slave vessels, feeding on the corpses of people killed or cast into the sea, and turning the ocean itself into an instrument of terror. Today, the deliberate killing of enslaved Africans in these conditions would be understood as crimes against humanity and, in many cases, as acts of genocide and war crimes under international law, even though the specific ecological impact on shark migration remains debated and only partly documented. ## Sharks, Slave Ships, and the Historical Record From the earliest eyewitness accounts of the Middle Passage, sharks appear again and again in the written record as companions of slave ships and predators of the enslaved. Ships’ logs, sailors’ narratives, and abolitionist pamphlets describe sharks gathering around slavers off West Africa and trailing them across the Atlantic, drawn by a constant stream of bodies, blood, food waste, and human excrement thrown into the sea. Historian Kevin Dawson’s essay "History from Below the Water Line" traces how sharks were both literal threats and powerful symbols of the violence of the trade, noting repeated descriptions of bull and tiger sharks circling vessels and consuming people who leapt or were forced overboard. Abolitionist writing and illustrations made these scenes central to their campaigns, using the image of sharks tearing at human bodies to expose the cruelty and profit-driven logic of the Middle Passage. At the same time, Dawson and other scholars emphasize the need to separate vivid metaphor from material fact. Sharks undeniably fed on the dead and dying cast into the ocean, and sailors were acutely aware that they followed ships expecting a reliable food source, but many references were also crafted for rhetorical effect in abolitionist literature. This means historians treat shark-following behavior as well supported by testimony, while being cautious about claims that go beyond what sources can reliably show, especially when they are rooted in moral imagery rather than systematic observation. ## Did Sharks’ Migration Routes Really Change? The popular claim today is that "so many bodies were dumped" from slave ships that sharks permanently changed their migratory routes to follow the transatlantic slave trade’s paths. Some modern historians and writers repeat this as settled fact, including essays that state the slave trade "brought about a change in the habits of the Atlantic Ocean sharks" who "instinctively migrated following slave ships in search of human flesh" from Africa to the Americas. A Smithsonian Books essay on the enduring impact of the slave trade likewise asserts that sharks’ migratory patterns were "transformed" as bodies lured them across the ocean. Contemporary environmental commentary and activist media echo this claim, suggesting predator species, particularly sharks, began following new routes that matched slave ship trajectories. Other researchers and historically trained commentators urge more caution. They note that while there is substantial evidence that sharks followed ships for extended periods, attracted by food and waste, it is "impossible to say definitively" that species-level migration patterns were changed in a permanent way, or to prove that specific sharks tracked particular ships across entire ocean basins. Early modern maritime expansion introduced thousands of vessels depositing organic matter into previously less-trafficked waters, so sharks and other predators naturally lingered near new, predictable food sources. This conditioning could lead individual animals or groups to deviate temporarily from typical ranges, but the historical record and modern marine science do not yet offer hard data to reconstruct basin-wide migration shifts caused solely by slave-ship bodies. Taken together, the best-supported claim is that sharks routinely shadowed slave ships and fed on the human and animal remains they produced, and that this behavior could alter local movement patterns and routes in the vicinity of slaving lanes. The stronger statement—that the Atlantic slave trade permanently reprogrammed shark migrations at the species level—remains an informed hypothesis and a powerful metaphor rather than a conclusively proven scientific fact. The archive preserves both the testimonies that show sharks as constant presences along the Middle Passage and the scholarly caution that keeps the ecological claim from being overstated. ## Sharks as a Symbol of Terror and Resistance For people trapped in the holds, sharks were part of the psychological machinery of terror. Enslavers used the threat of sharks to discourage revolt and escape, knowing that a leap into the sea could end in dismemberment rather than freedom. Witnesses describe captives who chose to jump rather than endure the voyage, only to be attacked by sharks as the ship sailed on. Abolitionists seized on these scenes to reveal the moral abyss of the trade: illustrations showed chained bodies flung into shark-filled waters; sermons and speeches spoke of the ocean "denouncing" slavers through the presence of predators that trailed their vessels. Yet sharks also appear in accounts of resistance. Some captives jumped together, preferring death to enslavement, transforming the shark-filled sea into a site of collective refusal. In later Black memory and art, the detail that even nature seemed to turn against slavers—that sharks followed their routes, that "the ocean remembers"—has been reclaimed as a sign that the violence of the Middle Passage cannot be buried. The image of sharks circling slave ships persists in poetry, visual art, and popular storytelling, offering both a visceral reminder of atrocity and a symbol of the ocean as witness to Black endurance, survival, and spiritual presence across the Atlantic. ## What These Killings Would Be Called Today Under contemporary international law, the deliberate killing of enslaved Africans by throwing them overboard, forcing them into the sea, or maintaining conditions that predictably led to mass death at sea would be classified as crimes against humanity. Modern legal standards define such crimes as widespread or systematic attacks against civilian populations, including murder, enslavement, and other inhumane acts committed as part of a broader policy. The Atlantic slave trade was an organized, state-supported system in which European empires and private merchants transported millions of people under lethal conditions, routinely discarding human beings as "cargo" when convenient for insurance, discipline, or profit. In most cases, these acts would also qualify as war crimes an genocide, depending on the intent to destroy specific African ethnic, religious, or national groups and the broader context of imperial conflict. Famous incidents, such as slavers deliberately drowning captives to collect insurance on "lost cargo," reveal a logic where human lives were calculated against financial risk. Today, this would be prosecuted as mass murder regardless of whether sharks were present. The presence of sharks does not change the legal definition; it underscores the brutality of a system that turned the natural environment into an extension of human violence, making the sea itself part of the machinery of racialized terror and profit. ## Why the Question Matters The question of whether sharks changed their migration because of the slave trade sits at the intersection of ecology, memory, and justice. On one level, it is about the scale of human impact: the Middle Passage was so vast and deadly that it may have altered oceanic food webs, predator behavior, and movement patterns. On another level, it is about how atrocity is remembered. The vivid image of sharks following slave ships has been used to confront sanitized narratives of Atlantic commerce and to insist that every aspect of that world—ships, oceans, animals—bears traces of racial violence and resistance. By testing the claim carefully, the archive preserves both historical truth and the power of the story. Sharks did follow slave ships and were nourished by the bodies of the enslaved. They became enduring symbols of the Middle Passage in abolitionist campaigns and Black cultural memory. Whether or not they permanently altered their species-wide migration routes, the deeper fact remains: the Atlantic slave trade was a crime whose effects reached below the waterline, changing not only human societies but also the lived ecology of the ocean, and leaving a legacy of trauma, remembrance, and survival that continues to shape Black life and environmental thought today. ## Sources 1. Kevin Dawson, “History from Below the Water Line: Sharks and the Atlantic Slave Trade,” in The William and Mary Quarterly, Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 2016. 2. Rebecca Hall, “The Spanish Slave Ship Carlotta ‘Denounced’ By a Shark,” African American Intellectual History Society (AAIHS), 2019. --- Cite as: Black's Encyclopedia, "Sharks and the Atlantic Slave Trade," revised July 11, 2026. https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/sharks-and-the-atlantic-slave-trade Text under the Black's Record License: cite the record, keep attribution attached, cite the revision date.