With the possible sighting of a shark off of the coast of Dorset in England this week, questions are once again being asked if the UK’s waters will soon become a dangerous hotspot for shark attacks:
GET OUT OF THE WATER: Dorset ‘shark’ sighting will be first of DOZENS this year as beasts head for Britain due to climate change, experts fear (The Sun 5 August 2021)
But how much of this is just sensationalism on the part of the media?
What the media reported
The moment that swimmers were ordered out of the sea and back onto Boscombe beach this week, the word shark was on everyone’s lips. Whilst none of the media claimed it was a great white shark, their headlines, the juxtaposition of paragraphs and the use of words and phrases such as ‘prowl’, ‘fearsome creatures’, ‘predators, ‘monster fish’, ‘beasts’, and the well-trodden reference to Jaws helped the reader to a conclusion.
Fisherman narrowly misses jaws of ‘shark’ that sparked UK beach evacuation (The Mirror 5 August 2021)
Boy ‘lucky to be alive’ after ‘shark’ brushed up against his leg by Dorset beach (The Mirror 5 August 2021)
The content of the articles continue in the same way without much consideration to the alternative view: the shark was caught in the fisherman’s line and was not actually attacking him; the shark swam around the boy’s legs but didn’t even so-much as nibble at him, so why is he ‘lucky to be alive’?
What the papers seem to be looking for is disaster, danger and threat. They don’t want it to be a basking shark passing close to shore. What they want is a Great White.
What sharks does Britain have?
Britain has around forty species of shark, including the basking, thresher, porbeagle, greenland, mako and blue sharks. Unbeknown to nearby swimmers and beach-goers, there are numerous close encounters with them around the UK and Ireland each year. Just some of the encounters in the last few months include a basking shark in Torquay Marina in April, a fisherman catching a baby shark in Swansea Bay in June, a rare sixgill shark being spotted off of the coast of Ireland in July and a postman swimming with a blue shark in Cornwall this week.
None of the UK’s sharks are particularly dangerous and no fatalities have ever occurred in British waters due to a shark attack (although three people died when their boat sank after being rammed by a basking shark in 1937 and two men died in 1956 when trying to kill a shark with dynamite). Even so, when encounters between humans and sharks make the news, it is often with the hint of menace that few deserve.
Shark surge: How great whites could reach UK after beach cleared in Bournemouth (The Express 5 August 2021)
Do we already have great white sharks around the UK?
This week’s encounter in Dorset is not the first time that sightings have been hinted at as white shark encounters with little or no proof.
There have been several reported sightings of white sharks around the UK, many driven by the press’ desire for it to be true rather than by evidence. There have been numerous accounts of dead porpoises and seals with bite wounds being discovered, immediately prompting unfounded speculative headlines:
Is a great white shark lurking off the UK coast? Fears spread among holidaymakers after a mutilated porpoise washes up on popular beach (The Daily Mail 6 May 2016)
Some of these have received a degree of support from shark experts, such as the case in January 2008 in Norfolk, but without the shark actually being seen and recorded there remains an element of doubt: it could have been a white shark, or it could have been a large mako.
The press’ interest has also generated several claims of sharks being seen which have later been revealed as fakes. In August 2007 a perfect picture of a white shark spy-hopping was reportedly taken by a man fishing off of the Cornish coast and quickly lauded by numerous newspapers as the ‘evidence’ they had been waiting for. It later transpired that the photo had been taken in South Africa.
One credible encounter occurred in August 1999, again off of the coast of Cornwall. A group of experienced anglers, one with first-hand knowledge of South African sharks, were approached by a 15ft shark interested in their catch. All testified that it was definitely not one of the local species and that they had seen the distinctive white belly of the great white. The next day two fisherman in the same area reported encountering a similarly sized shark when it snatched part of the caught shark they were hauling onto their boat. A third report was made in the September when a fishing crew reported finding a dead shark tangled in their nets with a grey back, white belly and triangular teeth. Unfortunately, they cut it free without bringing it onboard.
According to the conservationist and author Richard Peirce there have only been nine occasions since 1965 when the reports of a white shark in UK waters were credible and only one he was prepared to give his full support to. The author Marc Baldwin believes a photo taken in December 2003 on the coast of Scotland could well be the ‘most credible evidence, and certainly the most credible photo, of great whites in British waters to-date.’
The closest that a white shark has officially come to the UK is the Bay of Biscay on the western coast of France, 168 nautical miles from the south coast of England. Both tiger and white sharks live and breed in the Mediterranean Sea and given the distance that they can swim, it is not unfeasible that they could easily make the short journey to the south coast of England from time-to-time.
Could the UK become the centre of white shark activity?
The question then is whether ‘time-to-time’ could become permeant and what implications that would have on UK tourism and fishing?
There is some evidence that sharks are abandoning their natural habitats and spreading outwards, as a recent study by the Monterey Bay Aquarium showed. They found that Californian great white sharks are moving 300 miles northwards along the coast to establish new hunting grounds due to ‘a loss of suitable thermal habitat, meaning water temperatures within their preferred temperature range are becoming harder to find’. If Mediterranean white sharks follow the same pattern, they will easily migrate into UK waters. In addition, there is no reason why they would not be joined by their American and southern hemisphere cousins. Sharks are capable of making incredibly long journeys, such as the 13,800 mile trip by a female white shark in 2005. In 2014 a white shark known as Lydia was tracked crossing the Atlantic ocean to the Portuguese coast, whilst in April this year, Nukumi started her voyage across the Atlantic, proving that sharks are already attempting the journey.
What would greet them in the UK is a habitat becoming increasing more suitable to their temperature tolerances. Dr Ken Collins of the University of Southampton has surmised that ‘you get great whites off the coast of South Africa where the water is colder than here and I see no reason why we should not have them in our waters’. Richard Peirce agrees: ‘broadly speaking,’ he says, ‘the conditions off several places on Britain’s coasts are very similar to those found in South Africa, southern Australia, California and New England, etc. where there are established great white shark populations’.
So while the press create more frenzy with sensationalised headlines such as Great white shark warning – killer beasts could be heading to UK as waters warm up (The Express 13 July 2021) the real question most scientists are actually trying to answer is not are there great white sharks in UK waters, or even will there soon be great white sharks in UK waters, but rather why are they not already here?
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