00:00:00:08 - 00:00:24:19 Speaker From these small islands on the edge of the Atlantic we look out over a vast ocean, but maybe it's not as limitless as it first appears. In the current climate, you might think the coastal waters around the UK and Ireland have been left lifeless. But beneath the surface, our seas still hold some incredible sights including a rare 12 meter giant that has swum here for tens of millions of years. The basking shark. 00:00:25:06 - 00:00:54:24 Speaker I'm Dr. Tasha Phillips. I'm a marine biologist and documentary filmmaker and I'm obsessed with big fish. As a scientist, I've worked on some spectacular species; ocean sunfish, bluefin tuna, flapper skate. But the fish that always draws me back as the basking shark. I've been working on basking shark research projects in UK and Irish waters since 2012, deploying satellite tags, collecting genetic samples... 00:00:55:10 - 00:01:18:24 Speaker and I've always just been blown away by their sheer size and their ability to just disappear into the blue. Basking sharks were thought to be vulnerable globally, following a long history of targeted hunting but in 2019 they were reassessed and found to be endangered and at serious risk of extinction. Now it sounds like without more help, these enormous animals might be about to disappear for good. 00:01:19:24 - 00:01:42:20 Speaker To get a handle on these elusive endangered animals. I wanted to explore the story of these sharks, to ask how they became so vulnerable, what scientists are doing to understand their lives and what's being done to fight for their survival. I decided to follow one of the basking sharks northerly migration routes passing key hotspots and speaking to local communities, scientists, conservationists and even former shark hunters to find out more about this legendary fish. 00:01:43:02 - 00:02:09:20 Speaker My journey starts here in Cornwall at the southwest tip of England, where I'm meeting Abby Crosby of the Cornish Wildlife Trust. So can you tell me a little bit about basking sharks. Basking sharks are the most incredible creatures in coastal waters. They can grow up to 11 meters in length, and they're here to feed from the plankton, which is blooming off our coastline in Cornwall. 00:02:09:20 - 00:02:33:24 Speaker We see basking sharks in the spring and in the autumn. It was always a real cause for celebration when the sightings would suddenly start happening. In recent years, however, we have seen a definite shift, and they aren't being seen frequently, nor are they being seen in significant numbers. So there is definitely a really interesting movement happening at the moment. 00:02:34:17 - 00:03:01:00 Speaker A species like basking sharks do make the people of this county very proud that their coastline is able to support such an incredible creature. And I think that is something we should all be very proud of because they're just magical aren't they. It's concerning to hear that basking sharks sightings are still declining here despite the basking sharks being protected in UK waters. 00:03:01:18 - 00:03:17:21 Speaker From speaking with Abby, there's clearly a sense of local pride in these sharks that they travel so widely and they choose to swim here in our local waters. The popularity of basking sharks alone demonstrates that people really care about these animals. Which begs the question why are they endangered in the first place? 00:03:20:06 - 00:03:41:04 Speaker The next stop on my journey is to explore the checkered history of the basking shark and to learn more about this. I'm heading to the site of an historic fishery on the west coast of Ireland. I'm on Achill Island. Meeting Alan Gielty whose family have lived on Achill for three generations. And whose late father, Mickey, worked in the basking shark fishery in the 1950s. 00:03:42:00 - 00:03:54:01 Speaker My dad was a harpoonist. Actually, you can imagine in the 1950s, there wasn't too much work. They gave huge employment. 50, 60 people in the shark fishing industry just in the local area here. 00:03:54:20 - 00:03:55:19 Speaker It was a dangerous job. 00:03:55:22 - 00:04:15:20 Speaker Very, very dangerous job. Now, they specifically used the curragh. Now the curragh is a traditional boat made on the west of Ireland. There's no keel, so there's no keel on the bottom of the boat. So if it gets hit by a shark's tail, it'll just skip across the water. But a very, very successful little boat from the west of Ireland. 00:04:16:16 - 00:04:23:24 Speaker It's like a leaf on the surface. Can you tell me a little bit about the shark fishery here and how the sharks were used. 00:04:23:24 - 00:04:41:05 Speaker The purposes of it was the liver to get the oil. It was used for street lamps. For the oil and the street lamps in Dublin in the fifties. And the oil was sent to Germany for ladies cosmetics. And then the shark fins were sent in for shark fin soup and the carcass of shark was sent to Northern Ireland to use for animal feed. 00:04:41:14 - 00:04:43:12 Speaker So a lot of the shark was used. 00:04:43:19 - 00:04:46:18 Speaker You told me about your Dad saying that they used to fish sharks even at night. 00:04:47:12 - 00:05:02:22 Speaker I just asked him, I said, like, you're in the fifties, there's no such thing as torches or LED light. I said, how would you how is this possible at night to do anything at sea. he said we'd cut a piece of the shark liver, put it on the board in the bough of the boat light it, and it gave enough light. 00:05:03:08 - 00:05:08:17 Speaker I was amazed, actually. You know, you could imagine all these little lights out on the bay 00:05:09:00 - 00:05:15:23 Speaker That sounds even more dangerous when you put it that way, that all these little boats, with naked flames inside and hunting these very large and potentially dangerous sharks. 00:05:16:04 - 00:05:36:20 Speaker Ah you've plenty of water around you to put out a fire. 1600 sharks caught in one season. And you were talking two seasons, only six or eight weeks. So it's a lot. They're beautiful. They're beautiful animals. Back then, people were a lot more ignorant of the fact of what damage that would cause. 00:05:36:21 - 00:05:45:17 Speaker And what you see. It was a way of making ends meet. Ah they're beautiful. You see them here in the summer just to see nature in its own environment and protected Beautiful. 00:05:46:16 - 00:06:01:21 Speaker After meeting with Alan and exploring the old stone buildings that were until recently part of this thriving industry, I was recommended to speak with Brian McNeill, the last of the shark hunters. Brian was fishing for sharks in the 1970s and still lives on Achill. 00:06:02:08 - 00:06:24:07 Speaker Well, I got into it by accident in 1971, I was 24. One of the regular fishing crew fell and broke his leg and they couldn't get anybody else to do it. So he just said to me, would you, would you sit in for a while and. 00:06:24:15 - 00:06:25:11 Speaker Just give it a go? 00:06:25:13 - 00:06:46:18 Speaker Give it a go. And I did like, you know, so that's how we started. It's a dangerous job. You know, there's no point in going out with somebody you didn't trust, you know, because it's like a football team. If you don't trust the goalkeeper, you're not going to win the match. And, you know, to kill the shark, you have to be right on top of them. 00:06:47:21 - 00:06:51:16 Speaker He has a backbone around the size of a football. 00:06:52:00 - 00:06:52:07 Speaker Right. 00:06:52:20 - 00:07:20:13 Speaker And it goes the whole way down to his tail. You can only kill him between the dorsal fin and his last gill. If you get within an inch of that space, his eyes rolled backwards. Three men in the curragh, one spotter on the cliff. The man on the oars has actually the most important job of the whole lot because to he used to keep the the curragh away from the sharks tail. 00:07:20:14 - 00:07:55:10 Speaker And the shark is going with his tail all the time swinging it and slashing it, he goes up and down and smashes it down on the water. So he the man on oars has to be really, really very good at his job. The second most important man is the man that's killing them. He can't delay or he can't miss, which was normally me with the spear because I wasn't as strong or as intelligent as the other two and the third most important, but still very important is the man holding the shark. 00:07:55:10 - 00:08:18:17 Speaker He's kneeling on the net and he's holding the shark. The shark is going from side to side. So he may have to move the net over and back for the balance because he could he could turn the curragh There was loads of near-misses. Oh, yeah, there was but I was the only one that could swim. But normally it was me that fell out because I was I was up on top of the shark and I was the highest up 00:08:19:03 - 00:08:20:05 Speaker You might fall on top of the shark 00:08:20:07 - 00:08:39:04 Speaker I fell on top of the shark. I did a couple of times, but it was swim away because he he he'll dive all the time. He's not interested in me like he's swimming away and I'm swimming all the way. Like it was good money in the sharks when I started a fishing and was £100 a shark. wow. Yeah. 00:08:39:04 - 00:08:53:11 Speaker So that was, that was £25 a man. my father I think was getting £10 a week at the time. it put Achill on the map. Absolutely it did, if there were no sharks Achill would have been a lot poorer. 00:08:54:08 - 00:08:55:20 Speaker How many could you catch on a day. 00:08:56:13 - 00:09:19:07 Speaker When I was fishing the most ever I caught in the day I was ten, but in the fifties and sixties they'd be catching 100 a day. I would love it if there were they were protected under the wildlife act because to us the sharks were creatures, lovely creatures like, you know, it was sad when small sharks baby sharks get caught in the net and you couldn't get them out. 00:09:19:07 - 00:09:36:14 Speaker You know, the biggest one we caught was 36 feet, three and a half ton weight. When you see them up on the dry at Porchin, I would be thinking to yourself, well, you know, how did I kill that big animal? You know, mostly, luck. Glad to be still here. 00:09:37:21 - 00:09:44:22 Speaker It's good to hear that yeah, things have changed now. Now they're not needed as a resource that they could be a living resource for ecotourism. 00:09:44:22 - 00:10:00:23 Speaker Oh, they should be. There's vantage point at Keem bay surrounded by cliffs, you don't even need glasses or anything to see them. 15 of them back there last summer. 15 sharks swimming around in the large group like, you know. Well, it was lovely to see them, you know. 00:10:01:05 - 00:10:03:14 Speaker So you can watch them like koi carp in a fish pond 00:10:03:14 - 00:10:07:17 Speaker Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you know, tis nice to see them. 00:10:09:07 - 00:10:42:05 Speaker From speaking with Brian and Alan today, I understand that the Achill shark fishery was really important locally, providing employment in a remote area, and these types of local fisheries occurred across Ireland, the UK and the globe. Although the small scale Irish fisheries ended in the 1980s, the fishing of basking sharks in Irish waters continued with rights bought by Norwegian fisheries using modern mechanized boats with explosive harpoon systems very different to the traditional curragh until that fishery also collapsed. 00:10:43:11 - 00:11:10:20 Speaker But by this point, the large removal of sharks by fisheries and as accidental bycatch had taken its toll. Sharks are slow to grow and reproduce and the basking shark population crashed globally and is still yet to recover. I found it quite moving when Brian, who once made a living from killing sharks to say how much he likes watching them today and how he's glad no one hunts them anymore, it really shows just how much times have changed. 00:11:11:10 - 00:11:53:00 Speaker Hearing all these stories of the basking sharks fishery still fresh in living memory really makes me think about how many sharks there must have been here. Now we're excited if we even see one or two sharks on social media. But at one time there must have been hundreds if not thousands of basking sharks swimming in these coastal waters heading north. So I continue leaving the ruins of the shark fishery behind. On this next leg of my journey, I'm meeting with Dr. Simon Barrett, co-founder of the Irish Basking Shark Group Lecture at GMIT and CEO of the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group. 00:11:54:02 - 00:12:02:02 Speaker I want to speak to him about his experiences in shark research and conservation to understand how scientists learn more about these secretive sharks. 00:12:03:12 - 00:12:30:22 Speaker Basking sharks are just amazing creatures. You know, they're big, but they're mysterious. Probably less than 10,000 basking sharks in the Atlantic. Obviously, the advent of tagging and tracking equipment now has completely revolutionized our perceptions Why do they breach? When I started, it was sharks don't breach you're misidentifying them, they're whales. And then people got photographs. So simple things, simple questions, but we're getting better at it. 00:12:31:03 - 00:12:55:04 Speaker So in 1993 I got my first coloured number tags and it took me 15 years before I got a tag out on the shark. In those days of the sightings scheme, we'd get literally a postcard saying two sharks four miles south of Rathlin Island two weeks ago and some of these young researchers these days, they say to me, Simon, why were you so rubbish tagging sharks in the early days? 00:12:55:04 - 00:13:12:03 Speaker And I'm saying, Oh, you young people, you don't understand. You know, there was no GPS in those days. There were no mobile phones. You know, it took me 15 years to get out my first tag. So we've tagged about 500, over 500 basking sharks with these colored number tags. And obviously it's very simple. It's really a numbers game. 00:13:12:03 - 00:13:31:20 Speaker The more you get out, the more likely you are to get recoveries. And it very much showed that there was this northerly movement in the spring and quite rapidly, you know, within days you'd get a shark tagged off Kerry would be seen off Donegal and the tags sharks we tagged off Donegal were then seen off Isla and in the Hebrides. 00:13:32:07 - 00:13:57:00 Speaker One day, one day I'm going to get a phone call from some guy in the Pacific and we might show interconnectivity between ocean basins. I think one of my better contributions to the world of science has been shark sliming and all we do is that we use some oven cleaner cloth here and we actually use this cleaner at the end of a pole and gently stroke the shark. 00:13:57:00 - 00:14:13:11 Speaker And we get this black mucus. And now it's becoming kind of routine. But it all came about when we were out tagging and there were some black mucus on the side of the RIB. And I used to go out with commercial fishermen. We pulled up this net from very deep. There was a big hole in it all covered in this black slime. 00:14:13:16 - 00:14:36:00 Speaker And they said to me, a basking shark's bust that net. And they also knew that if they use that net again, there's a good chance they'll catch another shark. So there's probably some pheromones, some hormonal messages going out to the sharks. There's a lot in slime so all of a sudden we went from, we were very constrained and now this fantastic paper was published, which I think had about four or 500 samples. 00:14:36:04 - 00:14:53:16 Speaker We are obsessed with trying to learn more about them. And one day a year out with the Sharks keeps you going for the rest of the season. I think that we underestimate them. They look you in the eye and they are inquisitive, you know, you're trying to keep your distance. And then next minute they're getting closer and you're looking around thinking they've come to check me out. 00:14:53:24 - 00:15:05:23 Speaker They are inquisitive. They're not being aggressive clearly, I don't them they wanted to mate with me particularly. But I do think there's a deeper level. So I think we are underestimating them. 00:15:07:15 - 00:15:29:17 Speaker It was really inspiring speaking with Simon today to hear about how his close work with the Basking Sharks offers new insights into their behaviors, showing a natural curiosity even suggesting may be a form of emotional intelligence. I wanted to learn more about close encounters with these rare animals, and so I've arranged a digital catch up with some old friends and actually my former bosses at the Manx Basking Shark Watch. 00:15:29:22 - 00:15:37:12 Speaker Hi, Jackie. Hi, Graham. How are you both? So what size range of sharks have you seen in the Irish Sea and in Manx waters. 00:15:38:03 - 00:15:50:17 Speaker Down in the Sound I've certainly seen shiny black basking sharks less than six feet long. We've seen everything from that to the biggest possible sharks that you could ever imagine. 00:15:51:14 - 00:15:55:17 Speaker Can you tell me about the shark passports you create? What is a shark passport? 00:15:56:07 - 00:16:08:22 Speaker So it is about really getting size estimates, gender, fin photographs, slime sample and tagged, really important stuff. It started to prove a migration pattern, south to north, south to the north. 00:16:10:15 - 00:16:17:18 Speaker That's really incredible. Can I ask your thoughts on the accidental bycatch of sharks? Is this something we need to consider moving forwards? 00:16:18:15 - 00:16:25:03 Speaker Well, I have a relative who's a fishermen and they wouldn't report it because they'd probably got fined. So nobody knows. 00:16:25:18 - 00:16:29:00 Speaker I got to speak to the fishermen who. 00:16:29:13 - 00:16:31:03 Speaker Had got a tag. 00:16:31:08 - 00:16:51:10 Speaker caught in his net, but the overall message was that this haddock fisherman often caught young basking sharks in the nets and they always drowned but if they caught what they believed to be a big basking shark, they managed to break free and survive. 00:16:51:18 - 00:17:07:09 Speaker This obviously happens often So unless we have collaboration, much more collaboration between the users of the sea, the scientists and the government, I think, you know, it's going to be difficult. 00:17:08:21 - 00:17:20:12 Speaker Yes, I think that's really vital. We all have pieces of the same puzzle. So we need to work together to explore the bigger picture. We have to collaborate as individual efforts might not be enough. 00:17:20:12 - 00:17:21:05 Speaker Working with the basking sharks. 00:17:21:16 - 00:17:53:12 Speaker For the last 15 years has been the biggest privilege of my life. I would hate to think that future generations don't get that privilege Speaking with Jackie and Graham reminded me of just how hard those long days searching for sharks, really were and how even the simplest data are so valuable for conservation efforts. It's worrying, though, to hear that, like in other regions, there are now fewer basking sharks being seen in Manx waters. 00:17:54:00 - 00:18:14:11 Speaker And so I'd like to hear what else has been done to fight for their future. From my base on the West Coast of Ireland, I've popped over to meet with a researcher who I met through working with Jackie and Graha, Haley Dotson, who's now doing a PhD on Basking Shark Research at Trinity College, Dublin. Yes. So I'm hoping to look more at basking shark basic biology. 00:18:14:11 - 00:18:38:00 Speaker And so yeah, I've been using a whole host of different techniques. So using histology and microscopes going into the lab, to really get into the fine details of the second largest fish in the world, I'll be using these biological techniques on free swimming, basking sharks. So it's really exciting. And to learn more about their physiology, biology and behavior. 00:18:38:09 - 00:19:00:02 Speaker This summer we deployed a whole batch of these new tags and we deployed them off the coast of Cork Once they're deployed, they just pop off the shark several hours later. And yeah, we managed to get them all back. So this is me having recovered one of those tags. So I was very excited to get it back. Can you tell me a bit more about what questions are left to answer? 00:19:00:18 - 00:19:25:10 Speaker So many questions. So there's a lot to explore so even kind of the basic simple questions like where do they all go? Why do they go there? Where are they breeding? Are they putting in different places? Just basic biological questions we still don't know the answer to. There's lots to explore and lots of new ways to do it with new technology. 00:19:25:10 - 00:19:45:08 Speaker So yeah, it's really exciting. It's exciting to hear about this new and upcoming shark research using the very latest technology as to what this will tell us about basking sharks, we'll have to wait and see. Back to following the sharks northerly route around the west coast of Ireland. My journey takes me further up the coast along the Wild Atlantic way. 00:19:46:06 - 00:19:54:14 Speaker I'm meeting my friend Dr. Donal Griffin, coordinator of the Irish Basking Shark Group, to ask him about a new plan to introduce protections in Irish waters. 00:19:55:19 - 00:20:15:09 Speaker So we have this new campaign that we launched earlier this year which is to gain legal protection for Basking Sharks in Irish waters. We are so lucky and privileged in Ireland to have such a big influx of Basking Sharks in our coastal waters during the summer. And so it's our responsibility, then it's our duty to protect them while they're here. 00:20:15:23 - 00:20:41:12 Speaker So we currently have over 12 and a half thousand signatures on our campaign, and that's a fantastic number and earlier this summer we sailed up the Liffey in a boat with a big inflatable basking shark riding atop. And we spoke to the minister then. And what we're trying to do know is to gather all that goodwill and support that we've had and make sure that it turns into action for basking sharks. 00:20:42:08 - 00:21:06:23 Speaker I'm incredibly optimistic about the future of basking sharks. There's a real curiosity now about basking sharks. People want to know why they're here, when they're here, they want to see them of course. Obviously, Ireland has played a role somewhat in their fishery in the past, but also, generally speaking of sharks some of the stereotypical maybe trope, the old stories of jaws, that has subsided a lot. 00:21:06:23 - 00:21:14:03 Speaker I think in this kind, a more natural curiosity about these basking sharks has really taken over, and that's really encouraging to see. 00:21:15:04 - 00:21:39:16 Speaker Donal's optimism is really catching. It seems a strong goal the Irish Basking Shark Group are aiming for ,to get defined legal protection for the basking sharks in Irish waters. The support they have gathered for this petition is just incredible. And I really hope the politicians are listening to what the people want. My journey following the sharks now reaches its most northerly point, the Sea of Hebrides in Scotland. 00:21:40:16 - 00:22:09:18 Speaker This region has just taken decisive action to protect marine life, creating a marine protected area specifically to help support basking sharks. I'm about to meet the scientists and conservationists whose research efforts revealed the importance of this special area. Dr. Matt Witt and Dr. Lucy Hawkes, lecturers at the university of Exeter have been tagging basking sharks in Scottish waters, exploring their movement patterns and using new technology to reveal previously hidden behaviors. 00:22:10:17 - 00:22:30:11 Speaker I wanted to learn more about their work to see how this has been used to guide conservation efforts and to hear their thoughts on the future for basking sharks. So do we know why basking sharks are moving to Scottish waters? No, I don't think we do, actually. The Scottish waters definitely provide basking sharks with a bunch of really great stuff they need. 00:22:30:19 - 00:22:53:07 Speaker But our research since 2012 has been trying to understand whether the basking sharks actually might be heading to Scottish waters to breed. So maybe they can eat there, but maybe that's not the main thing they're going there for. And so we've been working with various different new types of technology to try to work out whether we can see if basking sharks are actually courting, mating and even giving birth in Scottish waters. 00:22:53:23 - 00:23:12:06 Speaker So we had three camera units made, and the idea is that they tow along behind the shark and then you have to go and physically retrieve the camera. Download the data and then watch this selection of amazing movies that your shark cameraperson has actually filmed for you. Oh, that sounds amazing. Did it reveal anything you weren't expecting to find? 00:23:12:15 - 00:23:34:10 Speaker We did see some amazing stuff; out of the eerie gloom we saw this incredible mass of basking sharks. There were there were two sharks together kind of touching their pectoral fins. There were sharks swimming over the top of them, sharks coming up underneath them. These massive sharks that were incredibly close to one another, which is really suspicious. I mean, it really looks like it might be something related to courtship and mating. 00:23:35:04 - 00:24:02:20 Speaker And when we saw it, we were all just going, what is this thing? The fact that the video is so dark and grain, you're kind of like, what's going on? And these sharks get closer and closer. And when you think these sharks will be up to ten meters long?.You know, this is like, it's like a car park of double decker busses of biomass gathered in this one place together for some very important reason, which I'm quite certain has to be related to courtship, although we have yet to actually catch them in the act. 00:24:03:20 - 00:24:22:07 Speaker That sounds fascinating. Sharks have a bad reputation as a whole, as these mindless machines. But you're saying that these behaviors then show that they're quite gentle with each other? Yeah. I think one of my favorite things about basking sharks is that they are these incredibly gentle animals, seeing those videos, this very, almost tenderly touching their little pectoral fins. 00:24:22:07 - 00:24:41:14 Speaker We were like, Wow, this is something really special. Prior to doing our work with the camera tags, we have been tracking the sharks using location tags. And we were quite surprised to see most of the time they do actually stick around. So they make laps of Ireland or sometimes down as far as maybe the Bay of Biscay. But some sharks do go much further. 00:24:41:19 - 00:25:00:03 Speaker So we have had some of our sharks travel as far down as the Azores and Madeira. And that is why using these cameras is so important, because while we know where these sharks are, we very rarely know why they're there. One of the great things about the tracking data that we've been collecting is that it's been able to show that the Sea of the Hebrides is a place basking sharks love. 00:25:00:20 - 00:25:19:24 Speaker It's actually been the first time in my career that collecting tracking data has actually led to a real change in policy and actual change on the ground. I'm so proud to be part of that. And also, I love the idea that generations coming after me will hopefully continue to be able to see basking sharks in the Sea of the Hebrides thanks to this kind of safe refuge that we've made there for them. 00:25:22:04 - 00:25:45:14 Speaker Our work in the Sea Hebrides has been quite longstanding. We've put out just short of 100 tags of lots of different types of technologies because we want to answer different questions. so the tags that we've put on basking sharks have revealed all sorts. We kept noticing breaching behavior and breaching has been described in sharks for many, many years. Finding,breaching on the camera systems was amazing, to suddenly actually observe it in a camera system. 00:25:45:23 - 00:26:12:05 Speaker It just brings a whole new another level of appreciation about that kind of amazing feat. And what we found is some individuals can do four or five breaches in succession with only a few seconds between each breach whereas others just breached once or twice a day. And it's always been associated with breeding. And so the point of the Sea of the Hebrides and the Marine Protected Area there is largely to protect the animals. 00:26:12:05 - 00:26:37:07 Speaker But actually, if you're also protecting breeding, you're kind of securing the very foothold for the recovery of that species. It's really hard to know what the future will hold for the basking sharks. And in some areas, we've seen quite strong declines in sightings. They're so intrinsically tied into the natural environment that as our environment changes based on the predictions around climate change, it changes the behaviors of the sharks. 00:26:37:14 - 00:26:56:19 Speaker And because we're so used to seeing them at the surface, and and we can't really observe them at depth, tracking the future of the sharks just based on sightings alone or in bycatch is really challenging We'll have to wait and see I think, we just have to kind of wait for the time to play out and see how numbers change. 00:26:59:11 - 00:27:26:01 Speaker Speaking with Matt and Lucy offers an incredible insight using new technologies to swim alongside these secretive sharks to explore where they go and why. It's amazing to witness such surprisingly tender moments between these enormous animals, but it's only by exploring their secretive underwater world that we can better understand and protect them. As my journey with the sharks nears its end, I want to find out what future challenges we might need to consider. 00:27:26:23 - 00:27:50:07 Speaker I went to visit the Shark Trust headquarters in Plymouth to ask the expert opinion. Sharks are integral to marine ecosystems. They support biodiversity. They also provide enjoyment for those who encounter them live in their natural habitat and this provides jobs as well. Shark management has long lagged behind that of commercial bony fish like cod, but the tide is turning. 00:27:50:08 - 00:28:17:11 Speaker We've seen a number of species added to international treaties. Blue Sharks actually received the first ever international catch limit back in 2019. And more recently, we've seen a short term no retention ban for short fin makos. So the tide is turning but it does take time. And what can people do to help basking sharks? So we've created a code of conduct that water users can follow to ensure that they have a safe interaction with basking sharks. 00:28:17:13 - 00:28:34:01 Speaker And finally, if you do see a shark, then you make sure you record it. And if you can then get photos as the dorsal fin can be really unique to a shark. So by building up that database, we can see if we get resightings I think the more research that comes out, the more we can know about them and then the better we can help protect them. 00:28:36:17 - 00:28:58:13 Speaker After speaking to Cat about the past, present and future of sharks, I found myself thinking of all the people who care so much, working tirelessly to explore this underwater world to better understand and protect these giant fish. When I started this journey, I was saddened by the constant bombardment of negative news stories or shouting about the demise of the natural world. 00:28:59:20 - 00:29:23:03 Speaker And although I can see that our historic demands were responsible for the decline of basking sharks, it's been really remarkable to see how much attitudes have changed Basking sharks are still endangered, but they continue to return to our shores, where an army of people are fighting to understand and protect them. This journey has given me a newfound respect for this incredible species. 00:29:23:15 - 00:29:31:10 Speaker And although the natural world faces many more challenges, it's rekindled something for a brighter future. Something that feels like, hope.