They do not carry Irish passports, but have plenty of teeth to gnash (if need be) at the Department of Justice. Five US immigrants flew into Farranfore Airport, Co Kerry, last night and spent their first night among men in tight suits in a seawater tank in Dingle.
Jet-lagged and anaesthetised, the five predator sharks purchased in Florida for the Dingle aquarium were taken by road for the last leg of their journey. Awaiting them in the home of Fungi the dolphin were the divers who have volunteered to acclimatise the predators.
No danger money has been demanded. The five - two brown and three tiger sharks - are not in the "Jaws" Great White league, but can be tetchy if they have not been fed.
The Tiger or Leopard shark is generally considered to be one of the most dangerous that man can encounter. At least two Tigers caught off Florida in recent decades had parts of human bodies in them, and in Australia they have been held responsible for many attacks on bathers.
They practice cannibalism, and one caught off Texas had even eaten an unlucky black cat.
The Brown or Sandbar shark likes shallow waters, including the port of New York and, on this side of the Atlantic, the canals of Venice. It belongs to the family known as "Requiem" sharks, because of their reputation for causing death.
Ironically, a request from the Dingle aquarium, Mara Beo, for assistance from the Naval Service diving team was turned down late last week on the grounds that it was a "commercial" venture.
Mara Beo is a semi-state operation, being 30 per cent funded by Udaras na Gaeltachta and the EU. It co-operates with the Department of Defence in training naval cadets for fishery patrol and inspection work.
"Surely the Department of Defence realises that training with sharks is essential for divers working in Irish waters" a spokesman for the aquarium said.
The five sharks and two stingrays were purchased from a Vietnam veteran in Florida. A £400,000 tank has been installed in the aquarium, and some Irish tope - members of the shark family - have been acquired to keep them company.
Though sharks are familiar in Irish waters, and were once hunted commercially, the most common are vegetarians.
The plankton-eating basking shark or "sunfish" is so called because of its habit of lying on the surface, back awash and first dorsal fin surfing the water like a small black sail.
With 1,277 miles of coastline, Florida has at least 40 species of shark, most of which are said to be harmless. However, many a "harmless" shark turns inexplicably on man, according to Harold McCormick, Tom Allen and Capt William Young, authors of an authoritative study.
Though statistics show that the chances of being attacked by one are about as great as being struck by lightning, the manner of death is usually far more dramatic. And there is nothing quite like the fear evoked by the sight of a dark dorsal fin or an ominous shadow beneath the surface.
