FIN-TASTIC BEASTS

A relationship, I think, is like a shark – it has to constantly move forward or it dies,” muses Annie Hall’s Alvy Singer (Woody Allen). “And I think what we got on our hands, is a dead shark.” Whether detonated, incinerated, electrocuted or devoured, we have hardly been short of dead sharks in the years both before and after the ocean’s scariest apex predator chomped its way into the public’s consciousness in Steven Spielberg’s Jaws. As you might expect of a species that has lived on Earth for more than 420 million years, though, they’re never gone for long. And when they return, and return they will, you can be certain of one thing: you’re gonna need a bigger boat.

Before we go any further, we should make it clear we are talking about sharks – the sinister, toothy, marauding variety who haunt our culture and our nightmares with their lust for blood and taste for human flesh. sharks are a very different kettle of fish. For one thing, they are discerning eaters, with slow digestive tracts that mean they eat a tiny fraction of their body weight daily. For another they attack humans very rarely,