DIVE IN!

Steve Backshall met up with BBC Wildlife editor Paul McGuinness to explain why we need to stop thinking of sharks as creatures to fear

- Paul McGuinness

HALF OF ALL SHARK SPECIES ARE NOW LISTED as endangered or critically endangered, despite their role in ocean ecosystems. Steve shares his fascination with these misunderstood creatures – and how social media could be their unlikely saviour

BBC WILDLIFE: WHAT DO YOU FIND SO fascinating about sharks?

Steve Backshall: We have an inherent fascination for apex predators – for the top-of-the-line predator that is at the evolutionary high-water mark, and sharks appear to be that.

They have super senses and can detect the movement of fish – that may already be long gone – from the wake they leave behind. They have the ability to sense the weak electrical fields given off by the moving muscles of their prey. They have an extraordinary olfactory sense – the ability to perceive minute amounts of a substance many, many times diluted in water. They are incredibly beautiful, very sleek and streamlined, but also incredibly complex.

And their presence encompasses the most important and interesting span of time on our planet – at least 400 million years, possibly more like 500 million years. They’ve lived through all the major extinction events, but they could disappear within this one that’s occurring right now. And that is baffling and frustrating, and it’s also something that I’ve seen with my own eyes.

I’ve been going back to the exact same dive site where I dived in 1991, 1997, 2000, 2003, 2007, 2012 and now, and seeing the decline in the reefs, in the mangroves and in the sharks, it hits you, it really hits you. It’s like seeing your local woodlands cut down it has that same impact on you, and in a way that you just don’t get from reading about it in a newspaper.