A British diver swam alongside a huge prehistoric shark that has rarely been spotted alive.

Bee Smith – who has appeared on Springwatch – planned for two years to find the elusive megamouth shark off the coast of Taiwan.

Impressive footage filmed on June 7 shows the 23-year-old swimming alongside a five-metre-long female shark in the pitch black ocean.

Megamouth sharks have only been sighted 279 times worldwide as they dwell in the deep waters during the day and only come to the surface at night following plankton.

Bee said: “From the first moment that I saw each of the megamouths it didn’t seem real. When I was with them I was focused on doing what needed to be done for the project.

“It was only really after the encounters were over that I could process what happened, and I was so happy when I got back on the boat.

“Personally it meant a lot because I have been obsessed with sharks since I was a child.

“But more importantly, because it meant I had finally gotten the knowledge and footage I needed for the documentary.

“The aim of the documentary is to bring attention to the megamouth situation to protect them and raise awareness of the unfair treatment that megamouth fishers have received in Taiwan.

“I believe that shark conservation should work with fishers not against them, in order to be fair but most importantly in order to actually be effective.”

The first megamouth shark was spotted in 1976 off Hawaii, USA.

Bee said: “Less than 300 megamouths have ever been seen and most of these are dead specimens, either stranded on shore or caught by fishers.

“The majority of global sightings are from fisheries catches in Taiwan. The first public record of a megamouth caught in Taiwan was in 2003 and in 2020 a ban on megamouth catch was introduced.

“This means that if a megamouth is caught it must be returned to the ocean immediately, whether it is dead or alive.

“I am working on a project investigating this catch and release policy, for a documentary.

“I went out on the boats of the drift net fishers who have caught megamouths to film their fishing.

“If they caught one my team would help cut it free and film it and also take tissue samples and place acoustic tags on them.

“I spent a year getting funding for the project then a year interviewing with the conservation group that pushed for the ban on catching megamouths, megamouth scientists, and a megamouth fisher and his wife.”