Shark-Spotters Wanted in Cornwall

Fancy coming face to face with a shark larger than the great white and whose mouth could swallow you whole?

That's exactly what conservationists in Cornwall are hoping - they're appealing for volunteers to spot basking sharks, which gather in their hundreds off the British coast.

But don't worry, you can spend from dawn to dusk from the safety of a cliff-top vantage point and, besides, the sharks they are after are completely harmless.

Basking sharks might be the biggest creature to be found anywhere in the UK, but they use their giant mouths to filter seawater for plankton, nothing larger.

When forced to the surface to feed, they have been mistaken for simply basking in the sunshine.

And when they do, each sighting will be logged by a band of volunteers at two sites in Cornwall as part of the first survey of its kind...