With every shark species I’ve swum alongside, it feels like a mutual curiosity. For me, when you look an animal in the eye you can see it has a personality. With sharks, you can really see a character looking back at you. I do sometimes find myself apologising to them.

I have always been fascinated by marine animals. When I was a child, I was always drawing pictures of orcas, great white sharks and leopard seals, which were the animals I used to watch closely in wildlife documentaries. Back then there weren’t quite as many documentaries being made, so I would watch the same ones over and over again.

I first started playing with cameras when I was a kid, my dad had access to a huge VHS shoulder camera, and some old school VHS editing machines. I started making movies when I was quite young, and also re-editing nature shows with my own voice over – they were terrible. I didn’t go into a career behind the camera immediately – it was an interest but nothing more. When I picked it up again in 2014 it was mostly editing and underwater filming with a GoPro. It was that year that I took a big leap back into filmmaking, as I headed to South Africa to intern for a company called White Shark Africa.