A war hero has spent two days and nights swimming among sharks for a new documentary.
James Glancy, 35, of Wimbledon, served three combat tours in Afghanistan as an officer in the Royal Marines and Special Forces, and was awarded a Conspicuous Gallantry Cross by the Queen after a counter-terrorism mission in 2012.
The ex-soldier took on the survival attempt with Paul de Gelder, 40, an Australian former paratrooper who lost his right arm and leg to a bull shark in Sydney Harbour in 2009.
Armed only with poles and a net, the pair spent two days and nights off the Bahamas. They used Mr de Gelder’s prosthetic arm to gather rainwater to drink and “cuddled each other at night” to ward off hypothermia.
Mr Glancy said: “We were with bull sharks, they are the most aggressive, and mainly oceanic white tips — if you fall in the sea it is generally these that will kill you… We tied ourselves together with rope, and at night we had to have a protective net or we would have got eaten.” He said they could push the sharks away when necessary as “their nose is very sensitive”.
Mr Glancy, a director of Veterans For Wildlife, wanted to show how sharks need protection. He said: “Between 70 and 100 million sharks a year are killed for their fins, it is horrendous.” Sharkwrecked will be shown on the Discovery Channel.
Source: standard.co.uk