JULY "99

If you thought the shark in the film Jaws was scary, how about a real life flesh eating giant 56 ft long weighing as much as a Challenger Tank and a mouth so big , when agape you could stand upright in it. That's the sort of creature the first cavemen might have met if they had ventured far offshore. The razor-thoothed Megalodon at 65 tons was the biggest carnivorous fish the world has seen. The Blue Whale of today is twice as heavy but is of course a mammal and only eats small creatures which it filters from the sea, but megalodon specialized in crushing its prey to death, it did not kill by ripping the whales soft under-belly with slashes and bites as modem sharks do, but could put the big squeeze on a 30 ft whale.

Scientists in America say it was the king of the oceans for 20 million years but fortunately for us it died out about 1 million years ago. Last year Britain made Europe's biggest fish the Basking Shark a protected species in our waters and are trying to get international laws to save the shark, for there are fears that the soaring demand for shark's fin soup in China is threatening its future. A single fin was reportedly seen on sale in China for £6,000.

On Friday June 25th a lady went into the Cornwall Wildlife Trust shop in Penzance to report that she had seen a black Sealion at Penberth on the previous evening and also earlier in the day of the 25th. Having often seen Grey Seals, she was sure that it was not one of that specie, neither was it the lighter coloured Stellars Sealion which has been living off west Cornwall for the past 18 years and often seen around the Brisons off Cape Cornwall. She described it as being very black and not just dark coloured because it was wet, in which case it would probably be a Californian Sealion, the species trained for the circus or stage.

A few Leatherback Turtles were seen during June, but these were all off or near the Isles of Scilly, Sunfish have been seen from the western approaches also two in Mounts Bay and another off Rumps Point up beyond Padstow and the Mouth of the Camel, so we can expect to see more of them this month. We usually think of Bottlenosed Dolphins as Happy-go-Lucky and friendly creatures, particularly toward man, but this is not always the case against other Dolphins. Benty and his little pod of five were in the Helford river in the evening of June 16th and two smaller dolphins, thought to be Commons, came into the river and they were chased with great ferocity by the Bottlenosed. On June 21st a pod of 5 were seen to chase a smaller dolphin which came by off Portscatho and on the 22nd June 2 Common Dolphins in Fowey harbour were being chased by Bottlenosed Dolphins, so with some other sea creatures they can be quite aggressive. They have been seen from 5 other places around Cornwall during June.

Basking Sharks have constituted by far the largest number of sighting during June at least 22 different reports from as far afield as Port Issac Bay on the North Coast to Maenporth near Falmouth on the South and some of these sightings were of quite large numbers, for instance 30 in Tide race between Brisons and Longships on 24th Twenty-One off Sennen on the 24th, Twenty off Porthcurno on the 24th and Ten off Kennack sands on the 16th. Other cetaceans seen have been Common Dolphins, Risso's and a Killer Whale plus unidentified creaturesConservation Officer Raymond Dennis