Just when you thought it was safe to go to St Ives ? oceanic whitetip shark reportedly seen off the Cornish coast
A dark fin broke the surface of the green-blue water in St Ives harbour. It navigated the bobbing boats before turning and heading back out to sea. On the beach of the Cornish resort ? panic.
"They were rattling the door shouting that there was a huge shark," said the harbourmaster Steve Bassett. "Typical ? we haven't had one in here for three years and it chooses this week to swim in."
The specimen was huge ? but harmless. And the timing of the basking shark's appearance could not have been better (or worse, depending on your point of view). All week, the talk here has been of a report that an oceanic whitetip, a rarer and potentially more dangerous shark, was spotted a mile off the harbour entrance.
Summer shark season ? Cornish-style ? duly began. Reporters descended on a town beset by fears that "Jaws" was lurking just off the coast. Bounty hunters were said to be heading south-west in search of the "beast". And tourist bosses have lapped it all up, enjoying the sort of publicity they would have had to spend tens of thousands of pounds to generate.
Bassett said he couldn't believe some of the things that had been written. "On the other hand, they do say that all publicity is good publicity. It's probably positive for the town."
The shark saga began with a report in a local newspaper, the Western Morning News. An unnamed mackerel fisherman said the shark, thought to be around 2m long, slammed into his boat. He reported it to Bassett, went home to do some research and the conclusion was that he may have seen an oceanic whitetip, which has been blamed for attacks on humans.
The Sun led the media feeding frenzy, reporting that the "world's deadliest shark" had been spotted, and compared St Ives to Amity, the fictional island in Steven Spielberg's film Jaws.
But rather than being upset by such a comparison, the mayor of St Ives, Ron Tulley, appears delighted. "We've been on newspaper front pages across the world ? from Ghana to New Zealand ? as well as all the national papers here. Those Sun reports are like full-page adverts," he said.
The editor of the St Ives Times and Echo, Toni Carver, says that some journalists are suffering from what he calls "Masooba" syndrome ? "Make a story out of bugger all."
He has seen it all before, most memorably in 2007 when tabloids ran with the idea that a great white shark was hunting just off the Cornish coast. A video was produced that certainly showed a great white ? but it turned out to have been taken off the coast of Cape Town rather than Cornwall.
Still, he has to admit that the stories are probably good for the town, comparing the publicity generated by shark tales to the tabloid stories of "beatniks" invading St Ives in the 60s and, more recently, the articles prompted by the success of Tate St Ives. "These stories create a buzz about the town," he said.
To be fair on the St Ives shopkeepers, they have not been jumping on the shark bandwagon. There were no shark-shaped Cornish pasties for sale and no hastily produced oceanic whitetip T-shirts on offer this week.
But Derek Emery, a boatman, clearly knows the media ropes, agreeing to speak as long as the Guardian mentions that his boat, Dolly P Emery, runs trips to Seal Island. "We'll see seals, obviously, perhaps a basking shark and dolphins." Oceanic whitetips? "No chance ? but it's great that people are talking about it. It creates interest in St Ives and in wildlife. That can only be good, can't it?"
Well, not necessarily, the conservationists argue. Richard Peirce, the chairman of the Shark Trust, was alarmed by reports that the shark would be worth �25,000 if caught (quite how that sum was reached remains unclear).
He doesn't imagine that the whitetip ? if it exists ? would be found, but other large sharks might be.
Matt Slater, the curator of the Blue Reef Aquarium in Newquay, is angry at the comparisons to Jaws. "I can't tell you how much I hate that film," he said. "It created such an unfair picture of sharks."
Back at the harbourmaster's office, Steve Bassett said the episode had given him some insight into how celebrities feel in the wake of a tabloid onslaught. "What I do know is that the poor critter ought to be left alone in peace. He's not done anyone any harm, has he?.
Was it really an oceanic whitetip?
With a rounded mottled white dorsal fin, the oceanic whitetip is a distinctive-looking shark and the man who spotted it is an experienced fisherman familiar with more common species found off Cornwall such as the blue shark, the porbeagle or the basking shark.
But oceanic whitetips are usually found in the open sea in tropical or temperate waters, and there has been no confirmed sighting in British waters.
Richard Peirce, the chairman of the Shark Trust, said that it was notoriously difficult to positively identify sharks that were glimpsed quickly: "You can look at pictures of the same shark and the fin seems to change shape because of the angle of the shot or the play of light."
At St Ives harbour, fishermen seemed generally sceptical. One called the reports "a load of bollocks". Another claimed that the shark did not ram the boat but had accidentally bashed into it as it chased a line of mackerel that was being reeled in.
The truth is that the sighting can never be verified ? and the reality is that it will not be long before another "deadly" shark is spotted of the Cornish coast.
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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jun/17/cornwall-st-ives-shark-media-frenzy
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