Journal of the thirtyninth day on board

10th June, 1999

Around Malta we have great hopes and in fact had already decided to stay in this stretch of water for almost 20 days. Where?

• A famous biologist suggested we should “Go to Fifla (South east,) you'll find sharks there.”
• A renowned fisherman told us “Around Malta the sharks fish in the scirocco (south west)”.
• The director of a large installation for Maltese marine preservation suggests “Stay wide of Ras il Qammieh (north west) because the sharks around Malta are there”

We didn’t have the courage to ask a fourth expert.

To the question "In which time of the year are there sharks?", nobody was too keen to be so exact. This gives the impression that there are always sharks in the area.

Conclusion: either Malta has sharks everywhere all year round (I think this is quite unlikely) or someone knows more than anyone else, but who? And when? And what shall we do?
The only certain thing from all this confusion is that we are undertaking a real virgin expedition, without any precedent and without any experience to back us up or enhance our search.