The most absolutely honest answer to this question is that we simply do not know!   There have been many stories in the media through recent years but, at the time of writing (September 2007) there has never been one single confirmed sighting of a Great White shark (Carcharodon carcharias) in UK waters.   Before I am inundated with e-mails linking to The Sun newspaper’s website, let’s take a moment to look at the evidence.

If you’re a regular reader of the tabloids, you might be forgiven for thinking that anyone dipping their toe in the Great British briny (otherwise referred to as the North East Atlantic) ran a considerable risk of being ‘torn limb from limb’!   Indeed, according to an article in The Sun newspaper during 2003, Great White sharks are now “patrolling Britain’s shores”!  

So It Begins…

On 24^th August 1999, a group fishing aboard the vessel Blue Fox about three kilometres (2 mi.) off the coast from Padstow in Cornwall were investigated by what they were absolutely convinced was a Great White.   As expected, this made the headlines in the British press about two days later; most tabloids displayed the infamous picture of a Great White leaping out of the water after bait, bearing its formidable array of teeth.    Apparently a camera was onboard, but sadly nobody was able to get a clear shot.   A day-or-so later, some ‘evidence’ of White shark activity was presented by The Sun, in the form of a shaky home movie showing a large shark swimming just offshore from Tintagel in Cornwall.   The footage undoubtedly showed a Basking shark (Cetorhinus maximus) -- which are frequent visitors to the South coast during summer -- and not a Great White, as the newspaper stated.   It may sound from the above that I doubt the word of the Blue Fox crew – nothing could be further from the truth.   Indeed, the description that the crew gave of the 3.5 to 4.5m (12 – 15ft) shark and its behaviour towards the boat during their encounter was impressively accurate of a Great White.   Nonetheless, without firm photographic proof, this sighting is filed under “M” for “maybe”.

Regardless of whether there was enough evidence to say, one way or another, whether White sharks visit British waters, the sightings were sufficiently tantalizing to spur a privately funded expedition by several shark biologists and enthusiasts to the waters off Devon and Cornwall during August 2003.   As perhaps was to be expected, the expedition found no trace of White sharks (photo, left) in the English Channel, although they were able to talk to several of the fishermen who reported sightings or (reported) seals with injuries that “could only” have been inflicted by a Great White.    The finding that should cause us most concern is that the group found very little shark fauna – considering their use of chum, there should have been considerably more sharks about (thus pointing to a serious decline in shark numbers in UK waters).

The debate was re-fired in 2006 -- first in June and then again in July -- when more sightings of possible White sharks made the press.   The latter of these was a report made by a 14 year old girl, who used binoculars to watch what she perceived to be a 3 ½ m (12ft) Great White feeding on a shoal of fish off Baggy Point, near Croyde in North Devon.   The shark apparently exhibited “indicative” bite-and-spit technique while feeding next to a pier.   The description given of the shark was extremely detailed, almost textbook, for the conditions.   Unfortunately, as with the description from the Blue Fox crew four years before, there is no photographic proof and therefore the sighting cannot be confirmed.

Anyone who picked up a newspaper or turned on the TV news during the last fortnight of July this year [2007] cannot have helped but notice that the entire debate has surfaced once again (no pun intended!).   This time, two more alleged White shark sightings came out of Cornwall.   The first to hit the headlines involved the appearance of a large animal breaching (i.e. rising out of and crashing back into the water).   The spectacle was caught on tape by a tourist filming dolphins about 200 yards off Porthmeor Beach in St. Ives during June.   When the video was played back, the gentleman saw what appeared to be a large shark breaching among the dolphins.   The video was picked up by The Sun and made the front page of their 28^th July 2007 edition.   Video stills appeared in the paper itself, while the video was put on the newspaper’s website.   The online version of the video was understandably compressed for easy web transfer, so the low bitrate and compression artefacts made it difficult to determine the dolphins, let along the shark.   However, one assumes that the experts who commented on the footage (e.g. the Natural History Museum’s Fish Curator Oliver Crimmen, and the Shark Trust’s Richard Pierce) probably saw the original footage, which one can imagine was of significantly better quality.   Regardless, the experts gave the only response they could under the circumstances; that the animal in the video looked like a large shark and a Great White cannot be ruled out.   That is apparently all some of the tabloids needed to hear to declare a “killer fish” present in UK waters.

A couple of days after the original footage made the press, The Sun ran a second story when they were handed video of a shark fin taken near to where the dolphins were filmed.   The shark was filmed by a tourist from a pleasure cruise just off St. Ives a few days after the dolphin footage was taken.   Once again, video stills made the headlines and the video was uploaded to The Sun’s website.   The fin of this particular shark, coupled with its motion through the water leave no doubt that it was a Basking shark.   Unfortunately, despite reliable sources from The Shark Trust and Plymouth Marine Aquarium stating categorically that the footage is of a 3.6m (12ft) Cetorhinus maximus, two misidentifications by people involved with shark education -- one by a curator at Birmingham Sealife Centre and a second by a former Discovery Channel Shark Week presenter -- led to a headline of “Girl Great White is Maneater” in The Sun.    

Worse than a couple of erroneous identifications of a Basking shark, several other myths appeared in an interview with The Sun.   It is always difficult to interpret quotations in the media but, seemingly based entirely on fin colouration, the former Shark Week presenter reputedly identified the shark as a female Great White; he is quoted as saying “That’s definitely a Great White — probably an adult female about 12ft long. Her mate will be close by.”   Unfortunately, to the very best of my knowledge, there is insufficient sexual dimorphism in sharks to determine sex without clasper analysis – I have never come across anything in the literature to suggest it is possible to sex any species of shark based on the colour of their dorsal fin.   Furthermore, the data on White shark courtship and mating is palpably scant – mating has never been observed and only one description of possible courtship behaviour exists for this species.   In a second quote from this Australian-born marine biologist he says of the ‘basker video’: “I’ve seen hundreds of Great Whites in all weathers — light, dark, morning and evening — and that dorsal fin cutting through the water is quick, thick and the correct shape.”   I have never been fortunate enough to encounter a Great White, so one might consider me insufficiently experienced to challenge such a statement.   Nonetheless, based on fin morphometrics (see box below & image above), the latter part of the quotation seems incorrect.   There are other inaccuracies within the interview, which are mixed with genuine observations (e.g. that White sharks migrate vast distances) as well as some reasonably sage general water-safety advice.

BOX: The basic external anatomy of a shark's dorsal fin is shown in the top image and an outline of the fin from the Basking shark and Great White (not to scale) featured in the photo composition above.   One might argue that there is no such thing as a 'typical' shark fin - among basking sharks, the fin morphology can vary considerably (see Martin How's Article for the BSoUP's site).   However, the outlines on the bottom left (click to enlarge) can be considered generally representative; both fins form a rough scalene triangle, with the Basking shark fin being more right-angled and that of the White shark more acute-angled.   As can be seen, the fin of the Great White has a steep gradient to the anterior margin and a slightly 'hooked' apex, leading to a concaved posterior margin.   The Basking shark fin has a shallower gradient to the anterior margin, leading to a broadly-curved apex and a straight or slightly convex posterior margin.

Hot on the heels of the ‘breach’ and ‘basker’ videos, came the ‘spy-hopping hoax’.   Spy-hopping is the name given to the curious behaviour during which a Great White (and some other sharks and marine mammals, especially whales) and sticks its head out of the water, seemingly in a bid to see what’s happening on the surface.   Actually, as a brief digression, more likely explanations -- given that the change in density between the mediums (air & water) would make vision blurred at best -- are that it serves either to permit sampling of airborne odours (as has been demonstrated in the Oceanic Whitetip shark) or, possibly, that it may scare an unwitting pinniped (seal or sea lion) off the rocks into the water.   Whatever the reason, it is a fairly well known behaviour of the White shark and has provided many a photographer with food for his/her table.   It was just such a photo that appeared on the front cover of the Newquay Guardian on 31^st July, accompanied by the headline “Great white spotted in resort waters”.

A local man claimed to have taken the photo while out fishing for mackerel off Towan Head, Newquay in Cornwall.   In this case there was no doubt that the photo was of Carcharodon carcharias, although there were several not so niggling inconsistencies with the photos.   There were two main problems: the photo was a perfect image of a White shark in glassy seas, despite having been taken with a telephoto lens from about 30m (100 ft) in Cornwall’s choppy waters; also, if the shark was 30m from the boat, why was it spy hopping (sharks seem to do this when they approach objects, rather than swimming with their noses out of the water)?   These apparent discontinuities raised the suspicions of most of the shark biologists (and photographers) to whom it was shown.   Obviously, the tabloids picked up on this photo and in 1^st August edition of The Sun, Doug Herdson (a biologist at the National Marine Aquarium in Plymouth) was misquoted as saying that “it was the first confirmed sighting of the legendary creature in UK waters”; what Doug actually said was that the photo showed a Great White and that although it was not impossible for this species to inhabit UK waters, there was simply no way of telling where the photo had been taken.  

Perhaps the ultimate death knell for the photo came in the form of a quote from the Newquay Harbour Master, who told The Times newspaper that ‘…the Benita Ann, the boat that [the local man] claimed to have been fishing from, had been sold to someone in Scotland 15 years ago and had not been back in the area.’   On 9^th August the photographer admitted that the photo was taken during a recent fishing trip to Cape Town, in South Africa, telling The Guardian newspaper he “…just sent [the photo] in as a joke.  I didn’t expect anyone to be daft enough to take it seriously.”   Despite this ‘joke’, the chairman of Newquay Chamber of Commerce told The Guardian that the stormy summer had been enough for Cornwall to deal with, without people spreading malicious material of this nature.   Nonetheless, the Cornwall Tourist Board disagreed, telling the paper that the “great, great white wheeze” had actually been good for the area, providing beneficial publicity and apparently failing to discourage people from visiting the region.   While this case was exposed as a fraud, there is a report of possible White shark spy-hopping behaviour from Looe (Cornwall) during the 1970s.

The Evidence

So, if most ‘sightings’ to date are either highly ambiguous or obviously a case of mistaken identity, are there any compelling reports to suggest Great Whites do come to our shores?   Well, the answer is that some reports are certainly more compelling than others, but we have nothing concrete.   Leaving aside the Blue Fox report (which we have already discussed), perhaps the most convincing account I have heard to date came from the waters off Northern Scotland.   On 4^th July 2004, a party of four divers provided a credible description of the suspected "Great White" that came to inspect their dive boat as they were preparing to enter the water off the western edge of the Summer Isles, near Ullapool.   Among the party was a doctor who provided a very detailed description of the 5+m (16 ½ ft.) shark and its behaviour to the vessel. (Photo: A Basking shark swimming off Pendeen, Cornwall during June 2007).

There are some other tantalizing accounts.   In January of 1998 a large shark -- estimated at more than 5m (16 ½ ft) long and weighing about 500 kg (1100 lbs) -- was seen attacking seals that had been attracted to salmon cages in Sandsound Voe (off the west coast of the Shetland Islands); some shark biologists have suggested it may actually have been a Six-gill (Hexanchus griseus), rather than a Great White.   Interestingly, 1999 seems to have been ‘the year’ for reports of large sharks.   During this year, a large shark reputedly attacked a 13.6 kg (30lb) Tope (Galeorhins galeus) on a line, leaving only the head; during the summer of this year a large shark was said to have become entangled in lobster pot ropes, although the carcass was cut loose and dumped.   In July 1999 a large shark followed kayakers up and down the coast in the Sea of Hebrides (West Scotland) and seemed to be the reason local seals refused to come off the rocks – the kayakers returned to the bay the following day to find what they described as a seal bitten in two (unfortunately, no photos were taken).   Finally, three years later during the summer of 2002, a lobster fisherman spotted something large breach off Cornwall; apparently, close inspection found lots of blood and seal ‘bits’ in the water (unfortunately, no photos were taken).

There is one interesting record of a badly injured seal that washed ashore on the Welsh coast; photos were taken (and recently declassified) and from the bite mark forensics, Shark Specialist Group biologist Ian Fergusson suggested that it could have been a White shark bite.   The report is interesting because it is from a whole seal that was otherwise relatively fresh.   Previous reports of a similar nature have been largely attributed to more mundane causes.   For example, during March 2005, several dead porpoises washed up along the Durham coast with what appeared to be large bite marks in them.   However, closer inspection suggested that the mammals were caught as bycatch, dumped back in the water and the ‘bite marks’ were caused by seagulls and other small scavengers pecking at exposed flesh.

Finally, there was some interesting mobile phone video footage of what may have been a shark attacking a seal in the Sound of Harris (Outer Hebrides, UK) during late June or early July (2007).   A detailed account of the footage and some of the expert opinion of the species responsible -- possibly Great White, but perhaps more likely a mako or porbeagle (although see below) -- can be found on Richard Pierce's Shark Conservation website.

Why?   Why Not?

Rather than questioning whether a White shark would visit the UK, we should perhaps be asking ourselves why we have not come across Great Whites off the UK before.   The water temperatures off the south coast of England have an average range of 6 to 20+^oC (43 – 60+^oF), which is perfectly within the 3.4 to 26^oC (38 – 79^oF) tolerance so far demonstrated by the Great White.   We also have a large population of seals -- about 50,000 Common (Phoca vitulina) and 120,000 Grey (Halichoerus grypus - photo, right) -- and we know that pinnipeds represent a significant food source throughout parts of Carcharodon’s range.   Finally, White sharks are known to travel quite remarkable distances – a paper published in the journal Science during 2005 reports how a female White shark (named Nicol) swam the 22,208 km (13,800 miles) from the tagging site off South Africa to Australia and back (South Africa to Australia was completed in 99 days). Indeed, White sharks are the most wide-ranging and widely distributed of all shark species (for which we have data) and specifically why we don’t see Great Whites off the UK is something of an enigma; an enigma that has nothing to do with the oft-cited ‘Global Warming’.  

The most northerly historical record for White sharks in the northeast Atlantic was from the mouth of the Loire in the Bay of Biscay off the French coast and comes from a set of preserved jaws.   In addition, three men fishing slightly further south -- at Pertuis d' Antioche, off La Rochelle, France -- caught a 2.1m (7ft) juvenile Great White in their nets on 24^th May 1977.   Great White sharks are also well known from the Mediterranean Sea, even to the extent that some authorities have suggested certain parts of the Med may be a breeding ground for this species.   For the Atlantic as a whole, the most northerly records for White sharks come from the northern sections of the Gulf of St. Lawrence off Newfoundland in Canada (the same latitude as the English Channel).   Briefly, it is worth mentioning that Great Whites seem to travel further north in the Pacific than in the Atlantic; reports exist as far north as Siberia, although the most northerly confirmed record was from the south-eastern Gulf of Alaska.   One specimen was reported in a short communication to the journal Copeia by fisheries biologist William Royce back in 1963 (it stranded at Craig in S.E. Alaska around October of 1961); the shark was said to have been 15ft 4in long (~14.7m) with a girth of about 9ft (2.7m).

Perhaps the best endorsement of how unsurprising it would be to find a White shark off the UK -- from an ichthyological perspective -- comes from the eminent shark scientist Leonard Compagno at the South African Museum in Cape Town.   In his latest revision of the Sharks of the World catalogue (published by the Food and Agricultural Organization, FAO), Prof. Compagno has extended the range of the Great White to the English Channel, North and Irish Sea.   Compagno writes “possibly England” when listing known locations for this species.   However, as we have seen, without tangible evidence -- very compelling photo or video evidence or a voucher (physical reference) specimen -- we must stop short of proclaiming UK waters the playground of the White shark.

Of course, despite all the reasons why Great Whites should be found in our seas, there is one very good explanation for their apparent absence: their global scarcity.   Doug Herdson is reasonably convinced that White sharks are now so rare in the North Atlantic that the chance of spotting one in our waters is vanishingly small.   In an interview with the BBC, Doug said: “Temperature and conditions here are all fine, and I'm sure they have been here in the last 3-4,000 years, but they are now so rare it is very unlikely.”   Additionally, some have suggested that, given the extent of Britain's fishing industry, if White sharks were around, we'd have caught one by now.   I'm not convinced, although I'm more receptive to the suggestion that the depletion of our fish stocks -- and White sharks are primarily piscivorous -- may have a role in the apparent absence of this macrocarnivore (i.e. lack of suitable food).   However, I doubt this is the whole story.

Possible Contenders

If we do the judiciously unthinkable and close our minds to the possibility that the reports we have looked at above are, in some way, White shark related, what other sharks could we be looking at?   Well, the two most off-cited contenders are the Shortfin Mako (Isurus oxyrinchus - photo, left) and the Porbeagle (Lamna nasus); both of these species are relatives (i.e. members of the same family, Lamnidae) of the Great White and, as a consequence, look something alike.   The Shortfin mako is a large, fast moving, predatory shark, which is predominantly a summer visitor to UK waters; it is found along the southern coasts of Ireland and England (east to the Isle of Wight) – there are sporadic records from the Bristol Channel and the waters off Wales, with rare reports from Scottish waters and the North Sea.   The porbeagle is another large predatory shark that is perhaps more easily confused with the Great White by the uninitiated; this shark is apparently present year-round in UK waters (although recent unregulated fishing off the Southern England may have decreased numbers).

It’s all very well of us to say that makos and porbeagles bear a ‘family resemblance’ to the White sharks, but do they match up in terms of size and diet?   Well, generally neither species attains the same mature lengths as the Great White.   It has been suggested that Shortfin makos reach a theoretical maximum of just over 4m (13ft) -- although, curiously, a report of two makos caught in a salmon net off the coast of North Yorkshire, put one animal at ca. 5m and the other larger --, with an average closer to 2.5 or 3m (~ 9ft).   The porbeagle has a probable maximum length of just less than 4m, with British-caught specimens averaging 1.5 to 2m (~ 6ft).   White sharks, on the other hand can reach at least 6m (19 ½ ft), although they mature at anywhere between 3.5m and 5m (11 ½ to 16 ½ ft) depending on sex.   In terms of diet, all three species are heavily piscivorous (fish-eaters); indeed, the Great White feeds predominantly on fish throughout its life cycle.   However, as most who have watched Shark Week or read pretty much any shark book will know, upon reaching maturity, White sharks expand their diet to include a greater proportion of marine mammals (especially pinnipeds).   The same is not true -- at least, not to the same extent -- of either the mako or the porbeagle.   Indeed, the porbeagle appears to feed exclusively on fish and cephalapods (mainly squid).   Makos are predominantly fish-eaters, although larger individuals may take larger prey (i.e. small dolphins) – pinnipeds haven’t been recorded in their diet, although in his 2001 Sharks of the World, Prof. Compagno notes that these mammals may be taken where their range overlaps with large makos.

So, in terms of size, smaller White sharks may overlap with larger makos, but when considering culprits for possible shark bite-related mortality of seals (as opposed to the scavenging of dead animals), both porbeagles (photo, right) and makos seem unlikely suspects.   Nonetheless, many reported cases of possible White shark activity from UK waters could easily have been porbeagles or makos.   Again, without proof one way or another, one tends to err on the side of caution.

In conclusion…

To sum all this up we can say there is still (see Update box) no conclusive evidence that White sharks inhabit British waters, although why this should be is unclear.   Several anecdotal reports exist -- some with very compelling accounts and it's interesting to note that the most credible reports have come from either north Cornwall or the Western Isles off Scotland -- but there is a sad lack of definite proof.   Consequently, until we have conclusive verification, UK Great Whites are resigned to the ‘possible, but unproven’ file, along with a report of a (usually tropical) Nurse shark (Ginglymostoma cirratum - photo, left) apparently spotted by two divers on the seafloor near Alderney (Channel Islands, UK) in July 2001.

 

 Addendum: I am indebted to Ian Fergusson for taking time out of his busy schedule to provide me with very detailed information pertaining to the distribution of the Great White shark.

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