Part of the importance of nature in the life of a culture is that it intersects the life of the imagination. It expands the territory for what human thought can encompass.

If I stand on the shore at Longnook and I say, "There are sharks out there, there are white sharks out there," I have expanded the range and the reach of my imagination. I am sharing the environment with a great creature, one of nature's creations.

They are a force that throw us up against very mysterious aspects of life. Life, death, power, violence. The truly unsympathetic quality of life.

We like to think that our lives are orderly and can be easily maintained, but sharks are one of the places where we don't find cooperation from the natural world, in terms of our sense of ownership and use.