Local diver raises a shark after finding an egg on Brighton beach

Ever wondered what’s in our Brighton sea?

Well there’s more than you think! At Brighton Watersports we have a close connection with the sea, working with it everyday. With this in mind we are also conscious of protecting our marine life here, especially with all the sewage being dumped into our sea recently. In this blog we will discuss eggs that have been washed up on the Brighton beach during storms and the hatchery we made in Brighton Watersports to give these animals a second chance at survival.

One of our instructors at Brighton Watersports, Gio,  is a dive master and in 2023 he went one step further in making sure our marine life stays rich in Brighton. Gio kept coming across washed up cuttlefish eggs on the Brighton beach, this is when Gio first decided to set up his own hatchery at Brighton Watersports. He placed all the eggs he found in a container with fresh seawater and an air pump, after just a few days the first eggs would hatch and we would release them back into the sea. Over a few months we had hatched and released 57 cuttlefish that would have otherwise never survived.

Gio also came across a washed up shark egg on Brighton Beach after a storm in July. Shark eggs are normally found attached to plants such as kelp on the sea bed. Unfortunately, due to Sussex losing the majority of its native kelp, finding a stable substrate to attach their eggs to has become increasingly more difficult for these animals and their eggs are often found washed up after storms. He placed the egg case in our DIY hatchery at Brighton watersports and for the next 4 months we would check on the shark daily and do water changes every other day. The shark was a lesser spotted catshark, also known as dog fish and this species can take anywhere between 3-9 months to fully develop in the egg case. We watched the shark grow within the egg case until it finally hatched after 4 months. We then released the shark pup back into the sea. The video below shows a recap of our hatchery project at Brighton Watersports.