From Grimsby to the Gulf of California, marine biologist Dr Darren Whitehead has built a career studying sharks and encouraging people to see beyond their frequent media portrayal as man-eaters.<\/p>\n
Although the Lincolnshire coast is not known for sharks, Darren said he had always “liked an underdog story”.<\/p>\n
“I’ve been amazed by how people have so much fear of sharks and they’ve never seen a shark in their entire life.<\/p>\n
“Hollywood and all these movies have just kind of influenced our opinion and perception of sharks.<\/p>\n
“I just wanted to knock on the door of that and see if there’s something true about that or if they’re just misunderstood animals.” <\/p>\n
Darren spent his early years between Grimsby and nearby Caistor, on the north-western edge of the Lincolnshire Wolds.<\/p>\n
“I grew up by the ocean, loving the coast, loving the smells and sounds.<\/p>\n
“I have fond memories of Cleethorpes, going down to the waterfront, spending time with my family and just enjoying the cold, fresh breeze of the North Sea.”<\/p>\n
At 19, he began studying marine biology in the UK before moving overseas, spending time in Spain, Mallorca, Kenya and the Philippines.<\/p>\n
“Unfortunately we don’t have that tropical weather in Grimsby,” he added.<\/p>\n
“I was always drawn to the more tropical regions of the world.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From Grimsby to the Gulf of California, marine biologist Dr Darren Whitehead has built a career studying sharks…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":790555,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":["post-790554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=790554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790554\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/790555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=790554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=790554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=790554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}