On the 19th of November i headed down to the Natural History Museum in London, i was attending a book launch party and would be doing a Q&A session on sharks whilst there. The book by Philip Hamilton is entitled “Call of the Blue” and tells the story of positive, focused people who are working to save our oceans. Featuring incredible images captured by Philip over a 5 year period, with chapters outlining the efforts by individuals and communities to inspire and drive change.

I was absolutely honoured to be a part of this, having been contacted around 18 months ago by Tom Hooper to give an interview about my work with sharks, excerpts of which were to be featured in the book. The launch was fantastic, representatives from all sectors were present, including CEO’s from huge companies, marine charities, activists and researchers like myself. All were there to understand more about our marine environment and the threats it currently faces.

In the afternoon prior to the launch party, the head curator of the fisheries department James Maclaine, was kind enough to indulge my curiosity and gave me a behind the scenes tour of the preserved elasmobranch specimens that were kept in the archives. This was absolutely fascinating and a real treat to see the scale of the collections they had, highlights included a Greenland Shark (Somniosus microcephalis), that had washed up on the UK coastline. This species is in my opinion one of the most extraordinary sharks out there, recent research using radio carbon dating techniques have been used on the eye tissue of these sharks. Results revealed that of the sharks sampled, age ranges varied with the minimum age being AT LEAST 272 YEARS OLD! The 2 largest sharks in the study were estimated to be between 335-392 years old! 

Having recently collected a number of eggcases around the Scottish coastline, i was particularly looking forward to seeing what species of eggcases were in the NHM collection. I was not disappointed! I was delighted (and a little concerned that i would drop it) when James handed me a Chimaera eggcase collected in 1904.

Equally fascinating was the enormous Great White Shark jaw, it was donated in the 1800’s to the museum and since then there has been an enormous amount of speculation as to the size of the shark that this jaw belonged to. Some scientists believe that the shark would have been around 8m!!! The stuff dreams are made of – well my dreams at any rate!