ALL THINGS WILD AND WONDERFUL
he world is going to hell in a handcart. But right here, right now, none of that matters. Because I’m in a Zodiac, out on the water on a brisk summer’s day, and there’s a basking shark incoming. It is huge – bigger than the 5.6-metre RIB – and heading straight towards me, the blade of its dorsal fin slicing through the surface skin of the sea. The water is calm and so clear that I can see the motdes on its skin, the gashes of its gills, the snub tip of its nose. Then it opens its gigantic maw to scoop up gallons of Atlantic seawater rich in plankton and I get a view right into its body, at the pinky-white pillars of its baleen plates, its cavernous mouth. It all but ignores us as it carries on quietly sucking up its breakfast, swimming gentle circles around the Zodiac, almost close enough to touch.
