- SharkyJones, is my digital alter-ego, online he's a tubby cartoon shark who show's people around the undersea world - a digital shark equivalent of Jacques Cousteau.
- Offline SharkyJones works as an Engineer and is also a professional Diving Instructor. In his spare time he is an underwater photographer/ film maker, naturalist, historian and sailor. He is also currently studying for a Masters in Marine science part time for fun. (though some of the modules tie in well with my job)
- He also plays a few instruments (badly), speaks a few languages (English, Welsh, French and Dutch ; as well as smatterings of several others and is learning Malay slowly) his main passion though (other than his fiance) is the sea - he lives to explore the underwater world.
- His latest marine projects are discovering and mapping new reefs (using my boat) and hunting for a lost WWII Japanese destroyer.
- SharkyJones was born in Wales, has lived in Seychelles, France, Holland, America and Malaysia, as well as worked for short periods in Bahamas and Brazil.
- SharkyJones loves fish, they are one of his passions, he has spent many years observing them in the wild and in aquaria.
He is also a big fan of "Finding Nemo" even though his shark cartoons (1999 and earlier) were around years before "Nemo" and "Bruce" and the others, he thinks Bruce might be a distant cousin of his somewhere!.
SharkyJones' motto is "Its better to light a candle than to complain of the dark".
His other motto is "DON'T TOUCH THE *&#$ing CORAL" he can be found loudly postulating this view every time he sees an idiotic diver lying on coral (which can kill it).
PS - Sharkyjones is getting married this year to wiredworm another photographer / diver www.wiredworm.com
Something I am working on in my own time is mapping reefs and popular dive sites in North Borneo to creat dive maps as well as then to help researchers make up detailed layered Geographical Information Systems (databases) about reefs.
I am a member of reefcheck and later plan to add my reefcheck data to these maps.
I have fairly considerable equipment setup now to map reefs, portable logging units, my 37ft Yacht S/Y Patience, drop cameras.
If you're a dive centre or researcher and are interested in producing maps of your areas / being part of my upcoming book, give me a shout on email.
