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Has a great white shark been seen off Cornwall?
Last updated at 11:37am on 28.07.07British beaches have been put on shark alert after a holidaymaker spotted what experts say may have been a Great White 200 yards off the coast of Cornwall.
Father-of-two Nick Fletcher filmed a giant predator - up to 12ft in length - hunting dolphins off St Ives.
Experts confirmed the creature in his video was a shark and admitted there was a possibility that it was the maneater made famous in the film Jaws.
Shark expert Richard Peirce said: 'I certainly wouldn't rule out that it is a Great White.
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'It is clearly a predatory shark, but it could also be a Porbeagle or a Mako.
'There is not enough footage for a positive identification.'
Oliver Crimmen, fish curator of the Natural History Museum, also viewed the film.
He said last night: 'It's definitely predatory and definitely big. I can't rule out a Great White.'
Mr Fletcher, from Rotherham, was holidaying in St Ives with his wife and two children when he shot the footage last month.
He was recording dolphins playing off Porthmeor beach and only realised a killer shark could have been in their midst when he watched the video at home.
He told The Sun: 'I got my camcorder and started filming.
'It was really lovely as dolphins are so graceful.
'You can see them at first loping out of the water.
'Then this shark with what seems a huge mouth, leaps out, crashes down and disappears. It's incredible.'
In the past two years the number of shark sightings off the British coast has increased as waters become warmer.
A handful of possible sightings of Great Whites have been made before in UK waters, but none have been confirmed.
Experts have said it is only a matter of time before the sharks, which are more usually found off the Australian and South African coasts but have been spotted in Mediterranean waters, turn up near Britain.
Basking sharks - which can grow up to 26ft in length - are a common sight off the Cornish coast. They are totally harmless to humans, since they eat nothing bigger than plankton.
In contrast, Great Whites have been responsible for a number of vicious attacks on surfers and swimmers across the globe.
Worldwide there are fewer than 100 shark attacks every year and just a handful of deaths.
Against that, 1,600 people are bitten by other people in New York every year, 150 die from coconuts falling on their head and more people are killed by dogs in the U.S. each year than have been killed by Great Whites in 100 years.
Reader views (3)
We think the Great White story is hilarious though it would be quite exciting if it turned out to be true. It's got to be more fun then the latest pretentious exhibition of modern art at the over-hyped Tate.
- Sue, St Ives Cornwall
This story just gets more and more ridiculous. There are people in the SW whose job it is to study and monitor the local shark population, there are fishermen who go out to sea every single day, there are coastguards who make it their business to know exactly what is nosing around our shores... and there has never been a single recorded case of a great white off Cornwall. Not one. Ever. Not even a chewed seal carcass to ponder. And then parliament goes into recess, a couple of clueless, landlubbing Sun-readers go on holiday and we're under siege from the Ocean's Deadliest Predator before you can say 'but that fin on the Sun's front page looks just like a basking shark's and that other one's much more likely to be a porbeagle or some other native species'. Even if there is a great white, it means absolutely zero... there was a whale the Thames, but is the Thames whale-infested?
- Rathbone, UK
Great Whites like temperate waters so maybe what with the supposed climate change around the globe, they too could also be adapting a new found environment. The demise of the shark population around the world could be attributed to this sighting of Cornwall as one of it's last port of call, like the Dodo future generations will only be able to see this magnificent creature in photos and books.
- Tony, Toronto, Canada
