Three years ago I watched him swim next to a great white with no cage, looking completely calm, and something in my brain just went "oh". Sharks weren't the monsters. This page is about him, and why he's the reason this website exists.
Human beings will only ever look after the things they value. Our first battle then is to convince the world of the wonder of sharks.Steve Backshall, when he became patron of Bite-Back in 2016
Steve Backshall was born in Bagshot in Surrey in 1973 and grew up on a smallholding full of rescued animals, which probably explains a lot. He studied English and theatre at Exeter, went off to try and walk across New Guinea on his own (he didn't make it, but he got a TV job out of it), and ended up as National Geographic's "Adventurer in Residence" at 25.
Most people my age know him from Deadly 60, which started in 2008 and is still the best wildlife programme ever made, I will not be taking questions. But he's also led proper expeditions to places nobody had been, climbed mountains, kayaked rivers, written loads of books, done Strictly, and got an MBE for his conservation work. He's married to Helen Glover, who has two Olympic gold medals for rowing, and they live in Cornwall with their three kids.
Grew up surrounded by rescued animals on his family's smallholding. So, basically, he was always going to end up doing this.
He didn't manage the whole thing, but he filmed a pilot on the way that got him noticed. A year later National Geographic made him their "Adventurer in Residence".
His first big BBC job, presenting the show that had been getting kids into wildlife since the 80s. It ran for four more years.
Sixty of the deadliest animals on Earth, with Steve getting as close as he possibly could to every one of them. It won two BAFTAs in 2011 and spawned Deadly Pole to Pole, Deadly Dinosaurs and loads more.
For Lost Land of the Volcano he led the first western expedition into the crater of Mount Bosavi in Papua New Guinea, where the team found animals nobody had ever recorded before, including a giant rat.
He did Strictly Come Dancing (got to week nine) and in the same year climbed Mount Asgard on Baffin Island in one 27-hour push. Normal year.
He put his name behind the UK charity that's fighting to get shark off menus and shark fins out of the country. This is also the year he married Helen Glover, in Cornwall.
Live on BBC One, off Bimini in the Bahamas, surrounded by hammerheads, tiger sharks, bull sharks and reef sharks. No cage. Millions of people watching. Nobody got eaten.
In the New Year Honours, for services to charity and wildlife conservation. The same year he was named Explorer of the Year by the Scientific Exploration Society.
A whole series just about sharks, on Sky Nature. If you only watch one thing from this page, make it this.
A book about his life in the ocean. It's on my shelf. There are a lot of sharks in it.
This is the bit that got me. He doesn't just talk about sharks from a boat. He gets in.
He's honest about the animals being dangerous. He just doesn't let that be the end of the story. The more you learn about a shark, the less scary it gets and the more amazing it gets.
He calls shark finning "the most baffling and frustrating cause in conservation". He could just do the exciting diving bits and leave it there. He doesn't.
Patron of charities, raising money, going on telly to talk about fin bans. He and Helen raised £360,000 for the World Land Trust in one year. This website is my version of that. Much smaller, but it's a start.
