With all the brouhaha surrounding Gordon Ramsey not catching fish and Bear Grylls not sleeping under stars, I still can’t understand how the red tops get away with irresponsible and misleading “journalism”. There’s recently been alleged reports that a Great White Shark was spotted off the Cornish coast and The Sun had blurry footage recorded by some holiday maker of said shark leaping out of the water after a pod of dolphins.

This, of course, sent that particular rag into a feeding frenzy of mockups and spotters guide and the usual rubbish that you expect. What tipped me over the edge, however, was their helpful spotters guide to the “Worlds deadliest sharks”. The Great White, of course, was top of the page. I’m just surprised they didn’t do a comparison image to show how it dwarfed a double decker bus or even St Paul’s Cathedral. It also features the Tiger shark, which is a very aggresive shark and will have a go at just about anything, the Bull Shark, which is also very territorial and aggressive, and the Mako (shortfin in this case) which is large but less aggressive and rarely, if ever, attacks humans.

However, there are two other sharks on that diagram - the Nurse Shark and the Sandtiger or, to give it the more common European name, the Grey Nurse Shark. If you look at the diagram, the Nurse shark looks to be as long as a Tiger and nearly as long as a Great White (the largest ever found being 6.4m in length). The average size of the Nurse is half that - anywhere between 2.5 - 3m (maximum of about 4m). They are dangerous to humans in the same way that dogs are - if you piss it off or provoke it then it’ll bite you. Which, if you ask me, is fair enough. Most of the time, especially during the day, they can be found in shallow waters resting on the bottom doing nothing except sleeping. At night they hunt and they can be dangerous and you should be careful - especially if you happen to be a crab or lobster or even a small fish. When I learnt to dive in Thailand, we saw a lot of nurse sharks and they did nothing as we swam around them and we even stroked its tail while it lay sleeping. They are beautiful creatures and certainly not one of the deadliest of its species.

The Sandtiger, on the other hand, only averages 2.5 - 2.8m long. The Shark Foundations database entry for the Sandtiger/Grey Nurse Shark lists it’s likely danger to humans as, wait for it, “harmless”. Not even “mostly harmless”, simply “harmless”.

It angers me to see such blatant crap passed off as fact. I know some of it must be tongue in cheek but - and I’m aware of how snobby and patronising this must sound - does the average Sun reader really take everything they read with a pinch of salt (insert appropriate fish and chips gag here) or do they know that some (most) of it is just crap? People decry video games, cartoons and rock music for leading our youth astray but here’s a national newspaper just feeding our nation false facts. And it’s(allegedly) sending a journo out with dive gear and speargun to hunt the supposed Great White which is, if you haven’t been keeping up, as listed as an endangered species.

When I’m ruler of the world, I’m going to have a big pool full of sharks with fricken laser beams attached to their heads and I’m going to feed this fucking lot to them. Of course, the sharks would be Nurse Sharks coz they’re so damned cute but hopefully the laser beams will lacerate, eviscerate and mutilate. Or maybe just burn them badly. I’d even settle for giving them an extremely annoying itch!