One of my favourite photographs: Ferocious power, unbridled force, predacious brutality... Amazing what you can find in the shower.

Well, I’ll be honest. I didn’t plan to write anything spectacular today. I just wanted to do something unusual: Bid farewell to Peter Benchley, author of “Jaws” (the book, not the film), who died today aged 65.

Why do I mention him? Simply because “Jaws” was pretty much the first novel I ever read in English, and also because it was Benchley who first got me fascinated in sharks. And his work on great whites with photographer David Doubilet for National Geographic in April 2000 , was just mesmerising. But then again, I’ve always loved the ocean and have been mysticised by the life we find in the deep places of the world…

Anyway, that’s why I was attracted to Biology in the first place. Life always has, and always will, fascinate me. And Mr Benchley was a part of it.

Then God said, “Let the waters abound with an abundance of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the face of the firmament of the heavens.” So God created great sea creatures and every living thing that moves, with which the waters abounded, according to their kind, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” – Genesis 1:20-22