SharkStuff 2.0

I wanted to share my white shark PhD story with people, to post some interesting things about sharks and spread a bit of shark education and love. Simple aspirations. At this stage, imagine a little white shark pup, cautiously but curiously exploring the shallow bay in which it was born, at first unaware of the vast open ocean that lay outside.

Believe it or not, this is possibly the only picture of a live white shark neonate in the wild, taken from a video shot by Cenk Balkan. This little female is from the Aegean Sea, Turkey.

Over the course of the year, SharkStuff began to change, to grow and flourish and take on new directions. Purposes and future directions crystallised in my mind as I realised 1) how much potential SharkStuff has and 2) how much I love working to expand and fulfil that potential. The shark pup, now a juvenile, caught whiff of the ocean.

A juvenile white shark spotted in Monterey harbour, picture credit to Patrick Anders Webster.

I wanted to do more, and to do that, I realised that SharkStuff needed to become more of an entity, a body that would be viable to move forwards with. It needed to go though an ontogenetic shift to reach the next stage of development. I spoke with my partner Chris and we decided to take the plunge and form a charity. You can see information on us on our About the Founders page. We spent a great deal of time looking through relevant legislation, roughly a billion different forms, advice pages and blogs. There are several types of charity and they each have distinct structures and requirements. To register with the Charity Commission and get Registered Charity status, you need to be able to show that your charity can bring in at least five thousand pounds a year. Yikes. Instead, and for now, we opted to form SharkStuff as a Constituted Small Charity, a legally recognised charity that has no lower revenue limit. As part of the Charity formation processes, we drew up SharkStuff’s Mission and Vision Statements and Charitable Objectives. These can be found on our About page.

Chris and I are extremely pleased to announce that SharkStuff is officially constituted!! SharkStuff now has its very own bank account so we can get the ball rolling with the charity’s finances and we’ve started planning our first projects, updating the website, organising public talks and discussing collaborations with potential partners. Our shark is now a sub-adult, ready to take on new challenges and I hope that you will join us on our journey into the big blue.

Beautiful male white shark in Guadaloupe, photo credit to George Probst.