ADORE JAWS!
100,000 big sharks are lurking in British seas. But, says TV naturalist STEVE BACKSHALL (that’s him with a great white), rather than fear them we should . . .
Over 20 years of filming wildlife for a living, encoun-ters in the open ocean with sharks have been my most treasured experiences.
Nothing compares to being surrounded by a shimmering school of sardines with silky sharks silently scything past you. Or diving in blue water with makos — the fastest of all sharks — rocketing by, all black eyes and flashing mirrored flanks.
It’s impossible to describe the sense of awe as a thresher shark glides alongside, its tail longer than its body, appearing to be coated in silver foil. I’ve had the honour to swim alongside tiger sharks, bull sharks, great hammerheads . . . even great whites without the protection of a cage a dozen times.
As for back home in British waters, snorkelling alongside basking sharks off our summer shores is the greatest wildlife encounter to be had in the UK.
They are the archetypal gentle giant, with their great, gulping, white maw looming through soupy green seas.
Sharks vary in size from dwarf lantern sharks that would fit in your pocket to those huge basking sharks which, at up to ten metres long, can be the size of buses.
No wonder when sharks are spotted in the water here they cause some alarm, like the 9ft blue shark which, as the Mail reported yesterday, was seen gliding around moored boats in the harbour at St Ives in Cornwall. It’s thought it had lost its bearings and come inland, perhaps after chasing prey.
holidaying families were warned to stay out of the water yet, despite their appear-ance and reputation, none of these creatures are a significant threat to human health.
recently, there were headlines about sharks terrorising tourists in Cornwall, but it turned out they were basking sharks . . . which feed on plankton.
These vast animals — which make up eight in ten shark sightings here — are about as dangerous as a toothless labradoodle!
Whenever I think the metaphorical tide is turning and the public may be waking up to the wonderful truth about sharks, scare stories like those are published which set back the efforts of shark scientists.
EVEN the Mail this week had the entertaining headline ‘We shall bite them on the beaches!’ on a story about a shark researcher who said species such as great whites might swim into British seas by 2050 because of warmer waters and the availability of prey.
But the fact is that all sharks are not man-eating monsters who are out to get us.
They are the most majestic, mystical yet maligned creatures in our seas, even if Donald Trump has tweeted that he’d like to see every shark destroyed. (Five years ago, he said they were ‘last on my list — other than perhaps the losers and haters of the world!’)
The issue of sharks around the British seas came into focus with the story that Devon fishermen had brought in an unprecedented haul of 20 in just 24 hours of sport fishing.
A new ‘shark map of Britain’ estimates there are currently more than ten million small sharks and 100,000 larger beasts in British waters.
The UK has at least 21 species of sharks all year round, yet there has never been a recorded attack.
And while we do have almost as many again in terms of migrant species arriving in our seas, we’ve never had a great white.
No fisherman has ever caught one, and no one has ever recorded a credible sighting.
The fact is that it’s not so much a case of protecting ourselves from sharks, as the other way around.
Because sharks are constantly over-fished, they are facing global destruction. A conservative estimate of 100 million a year are taken from the world’s oceans, and if you think that’s a cause for celebration, you’d be wrong, because the danger of shark attacks is massively overstated.
You are more at risk of death from a falling vending machine, while twice as many people die annually taking selfies.
Some years, only one or two people are killed by sharks globally — in a planet of nearly eight billion people.
A quarter of shark and ray species face extinction, and since they are ‘apex’ predators at the top of the food chain, losing them from the environment will have far-reaching consequences that are impossible to contemplate.
The recent increase in reported sightings around Britain is not due to there being more sharks — it’s more likely because of an increase in recreational shark fishing like those Devon fishermen.
Science clearly shows shark species are in dramatic decline in our waters, which is why I’m so passionate about protecting them — representing three different shark charities and touring the world talking about the wonder of these unique creatures.
So let’s meet a couple of our British shark species.
The most awe-inspiring is the Greenland shark, which may live more than 400 years, making it the longest-living vertebrate.
They may not mature until they are over 100 years old, which is a big part of why catching even a few can quickly be catastrophic to the survival of the species. These are found in northern British waters. Then there are blue sharks, which were caught in such numbers by that boat off Devon last week.
Well, blues are my favourite aquatic animal, due in no small part to the precious time I spent in the delightful company of one particular large blue shark who so loved being stroked that he nuzzled me like a big puppy for about five hours. Truly unforgettable.
This is mostly down to the mirac-ulous organs in their snout (called the ‘ampullae of Lorenzini’), which they use to sense the minute electrical impulses emitted by the moving muscles of their prey.
They love having them stroked so much that, occasionally, a shark will fall into a sort of trance, float-ing motionless in the water in an overdose of ecstasy.
Those kinds of close encounters convinced me the portrayal of sharks as mindless killing machines is just plain wrong.
That organ in the snout combines with keen eyesight and one of the finest senses of smell in the natural world to make sharks one of the most efficient of all predators.
THEY know what they want to eat — and it’s not us. I have been lucky enough to swim in blood-soaked waters with sharks on more than 100 occasions, and far from a crazed ‘ feeding frenzy’, they just zip past your ears, snap a fish right in front of you while ignoring your fingers, clearly not vaguely inter-ested in biting you.
They also have personalities. When I was diving with great whites in the Pacific, we quickly got to know every shark by name, and had a pretty good handle on how they would operate and how we should interact with them. Some were shy and sensitive, others curious and intrigued.
Occasionally one huge pregnant female would turn up, who was clearly completely oblivious to our presence, probably at least as old as me and one of the most exqui-site sights in nature.
Yet scientists know little or noth-ing about where she might go to give birth to her pups.
In my two decades of filming wildlife I’ve been to more than 100 countries encountering deadly animals. In all that time, I’ve devel-oped both a healthy respect for predatory animals and the abso-lute certainty that our fear of them is unfounded. That’s why, for exam-ple when I’ve been to Australia, even after a high-profile shark attack millions of people campaign against culling them.
It’s only a greater understanding of these wonders of nature that will help to break down those irrational fears.
So if you happen to be paddling in the sea off Britain this summer and see a dark shape in the water, try to feel a thrill of excitement — not terror.
If you’d like to find out more, seek out my TEd talk ‘Shark! Rebranding the Monster’ on youTube or facebook.