The magazine fairies have been, again… we’ve just had Wingbeat (our magazine for teenage members) back from the printers’ and two copies have magically appeared on my desk.
As you can see, we’re all about sharks this issue. This blue shark had such a nice (if slightly nervous) face, we put him on the cover.
I was chatting with the team about sharks while putting the issue together, and it turns out I’ve had more shark encounters than my colleagues here, so I thought I’d share some of them with you. Because sharks are perfect and ancient and, as our cover above suggests, they desperately need our help.
BASKING SHARK – Cornwall, England
Look out for these off our western coasts this summer! Photo via Wikimedia Commons
We were cooling off at Sennen Cove late one summer afternoon, after walking with my family along the clifftops from nearby Land’s End. I was a few metres out from the beach in thigh-deep water, the shingle swishing back and forth as the waves rose around my legs. Then, suddenly, a collective gasp from surrounding bathers. Just a few metres away was a long, dark, glistening mass, parallel to the beach, at least a couple of metres long, topped with a curved fin.
It was moving very slowly, languidly at the surface, and we soon spotted a second one a bit further out. After briefly wondering if it was some kind of porpoise or small whale, the crowd started murmuring ‘basking shark’, and several people swam closer to them. This, of course, caused them to float slowly further away, barely exerting themselves at all, until we lost sight of them in the glare of the setting sun.
Basking sharks are the second-largest fish on earth after the whale shark, and despite growing to a heart-stopping 7–8 metres long, they are harmless filter feeders, catching plankton by swimming around with their mouths open. England isn’t known for its shark encounters, but these guys turn up in the warm currents off Devon, Cornwall and Ireland during the summer. So far, this summer is looking pretty glorious, so if you’re down that way, keep an ear out for sightings.
WOBBEGONG SHARK – Queensland, Australia
We can see you, you know! Wobbegongs cunningly disguise themselves as the sea bed. Photo: Richard Ling via Wikimedia Commons
Long before motherhood stifled my globetrotting instincts, I was happily snorkelling over a reef of deliberately-sunk steamships off a beach in Queensland, admiring the colourful wildlife that had colonised their nooks and crannies. As I hovered a few feet above a rusting bow handrail with the ship’s hull descending into the gloom below me, I noticed a movement on the sand-covered foredeck. In a sudden, split-second movement, a long shape snapped itself out of the sand, and a bizarre-looking fish, nearly two metres long, flashed upwards and straight towards me at speed.
Flecked with gold, ochre and white, with fluttering, blurry edges, it looked like it was actually made of sand. This, of course, is the creature’s strategy. It was a wobbegong shark, a family of carpet sharks that rest on the seabed, blending perfectly with it, and shoot upwards (just like this one was), to ambush passing prey. Luckily, that doesn’t include humans – though they can give a very determined nip with their tiny teeth, especially if you grab or bother them.
I did neither – but froze and gasped (taking on a little seawater in the process) as this massive creature zoomed past my face about two feet away, glaring at me with an alien eye surrounded by weedy, sinuous facial protrusions (wobbegong comes from an Aboriginal word meaning ‘shaggy beard’). It zoomed off at some speed into the murk, and it was a moment or so before I could breathe again. What an unforgettable moment.
BLACK TIP REEF SHARK – Perhentian Islands, Malaysia
Black-tips like shallow waters. Photo: Stormy Dog via Wikimedia Commons
The Perhentians are largely undeveloped, and famous for their reptiles: giant monitor lizards on land (they’d suddenly poke their foot-long dinosaur heads out of the shrubbery, causing me to shriek!) and the beautiful green turtles off the white-powder beaches where they lay their eggs. I was on a dinghy trip, seeking the latter, and found plenty, too.
I tipped myself over the side, took a deep breath and snorkelled downwards a bit to watch a metre-long green turtle grazing among the boulders that rose from the sea floor. It took me a while to notice the other snorkelers waving down at me from the surface. I turned my mask upwards and shrugged; in response they jerked a thumb towards the deeper water and made the dive sign for ‘shark’. I was back at the boat in about two seconds, but not before spotting, in the gloom and some way off, the grey silhouette of a cruising reef shark. Not a huge one, fortunately, and not hunting. They’re a shy species and will swim away from humans, as this one did – but out of all the sharks I’d met, this was the ‘sharkiest’. Although the turtles remained the star of the day, the elation of seeing a sizeable toothsome shark among us was a definite highlight.
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These three are from different shark families, showing a huge diversity of diet and behaviour. And a couple more still remain on my shark-swimming bucket list: huge whale sharks (Western Australia) and the fearsome great whites (South Africa).
But whatever species and whatever family, sharks desperately do need our help. These magnificent animals, unchanged since about the dawn of time and perfectly designed to rule the ocean, are facing a new foe.
As Wingbeat reports, sharks kill about four humans per year worldwide. Humans kill about 100 million sharks – 73 million just for their fins, which leaves each shark immobilised and left to die slowly on the seabed. This is a totally unsustainable rate of slaughter that could see the extinction of many species and surely send shockwaves through the marine food web. Even the placid basking shark is already listed as vulnerable. Humanity needs to learn to love sharks, attitudes must change, governments must get involved. And fast.
The RSPB do a lot of policy work and campaigning for safeguarding our marine life, but there’s a long to-do list. If we can all raise awareness of the plight of the sharks and marine life in general, perhaps one day, magical shark encounters will be easier to come by. Trust me, these fantastic memories will last me for life.
Share your sea-life encounters or shark anecdotes with us, or log in to comment below.
I really like to see these fishes. I don't know why, when Stickman Boost sees the fishes or something from the nuture. I feel relax.