BBC star wounded by shark ‘the size of a bus’ & left with huge scar after being ‘hit like ton of concrete’
BBC star Simon Reeve was left with a huge scar after an ill-fated dive with a massive shark.
The journalist and documentary maker, 51, was filming off the coast of the island of New Guinea in Oceania.
But, after jumping into the water he ended up crashing into a whale shark - the largest non-mammal on earth.
Simon wasn't going to be lunch - whale sharks eat very tiny plankton and small fish.
But, the animals grow as big as a bus and their skin can be 15cm thick and hard.
Simon jumped in the tropical water to swim with a shoal of the sharks, but has now labelled himself an "absolute fool".
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Simon said to OK! that he thought the fish were cute and cuddly "even if they were the size of a single-decker bus",
He said: “I reckoned they would be soft and rubbery but actually it was like being hit by a ton of concrete when one of them collided with me. I suffered a very large scar across my leg and it could have been so much worse. I’d been an absolute fool for getting so close.”
Simon is currently filming a TV show about the great remaining wilderness areas in the world.
In the show, Simon visits Congo, Patagonia, the Kalahari Desert and the Pacific Ocean's Coral Triangle, where he tangled with the whale shark.
Simon says: “It’s the most important series I have ever filmed because it’s about parts of the world so huge they help govern and shape our weather systems and climate and yet there’s a danger we might lose them."
“I drove down roads in the Congo in the almost certain knowledge that within a couple of years 20 kilometres either side would be cut down for profit. Trees are the lungs of the planet, so for the sake of its future we have to find a way of stopping that happening.”
Whale sharks: Facts and figures
The whale shark (Rhincodon typus) is the largest fish and the largest non-mammal in the world.
The largest known whale shark to have existed was almost 20m long, measuring in at 18.8m (60 feet).
They live in the world's tropical oceans and usually swim them for between 80 and 130 years.
Whale sharks are migratory and have seasonal feeding grounds
They are filter feeders, opening their mouths wide and sucking in plankton and small fish, like a baleen whale.
The International Union for the Conservation of Nature says the sharks are endangered.
