Great White Hope?

A woman from Ramsbottom is sticking up for great white sharks and calling for global action to protect them.

- Paul Mackenzie 

As a girl growing up in Ramsbottom, the River Irwell was the nearest place Alison Towner could spot life under the water. There might not have been much in there that was very exotic but that didn’t stop her developing a passion for marine life.

She now lives close to the southern tip of Africa and leads diving trips and tours to see some of the world’s most fabulous aquatic life. Her home is at Gansbaai, a coastal town two hours from Cape Town, and the oceans on her doorstep provide a habitat for penguins, Southern right whales, Cape fur seals, dolphins, skates, rays as well as an abundance of birdlife and her favourites: great white sharks. She doesn’t believe there’s another place on earth that can offer such diversity so close to shore.

Although her father died when she was just five, she says he is the reason she developed a love for the natural world.

‘My love of nature is completely from him, she says. ‘He was a fisherman and he wrote a novel about the migration of salmon. His love of the sea and of animals made a huge impression on me. I knew from an early age that I wanted to be a marine biologist.’

She retains a recognisable Lancashire twang but every now and again she lets slip a very South African clipped vowel.

After completing her marine biology degree at the University of Wales she spent time as a scuba diving instructor on the Red Sea before moving to South Africa to be a marine biologist for the Dyer Island Conservation Trust.

She now works as a white shark biologist for Marine Dynamics and is involved in studying the great whites about which she is so passionate.