The Sun Newspaper - RE: Sharks!

Love it

Steven Morris
Wednesday August 8, 2007
Guardian Unlimited

A photograph appearing to confirm that a great white shark was lurking in waters just off Britain was today exposed as a fake.

The man who took the picture, which was featured prominently in the Sun, admitted he had snapped the creature during a fishing trip in South Africa rather than off Newquay, northern Cornwall.

"I took the picture while I was on a fishing trip in Cape Town and just sent it in as a joke," Kevin Keeble told the Newquay Voice newspaper. "I didn't expect anyone to take be daft enough to take it seriously.

"I can't believe the story went so big in the first place. I didn't even get any money out of it. If I'd have made a few quid then maybe I could have gone on another fishing trip to South Africa."

The picture was carried on the front of the Voice's rival, the Newquay Guardian, last Wednesday under the headline "Great White spotted in resort waters". On the same day, a copy of the Voice's front page appeared in the Sun newspaper.

Before then, the Sun had run a series of stories claiming that a great white - or even two, a male and female - had been seen close to St Ives.

The paper published a guide to the world's deadliest sharks, also offering readers the chance to download the theme from Jaws as a mobile phone ringtone.

.However, most experts dismissed the story as nonsense and said the sightings were of basking sharks - common in the area at this time of year - or other, smaller types of shark.

The marine biologist David Sims, who leads the only UK scientific study of large sharks in the UK at the Marine Biological Association in Plymouth, said: "The Sun seems to run this story every summer. Just because parliament has gone into recess does not make this a great white shark."

Mr Keeble's picture appeared to be of a great white, but experts pointed out that there was no way of proving it had been taken in British waters.

Some aspects of the photographer's story appeared distinctly fishy. For instance, the water in his picture appears glass-like, unlike the Atlantic off north Cornwall, which tends to be choppier.

The Sun declined to comment today, but sources told the Guardian the shark editions had sold "like hot cakes".

The Newquay Guardian also enjoyed a spike in circulation, and Matt Dixon, the paper's head of content, said copies had "flown off the shelves".

He added that, as far as he was concerned, the story had not yet been proven to be a hoax, and said the paper had so far been unable to get back in touch with Mr Keeble.

to be fair, i wouldn't expect anything else, on every aspect.

Is your use of grammar there purposely in keeping with the aforementioned extra long mayfair smoking types?