“A must for all those who enjoy insights into the natural world.” –Alexander McCall Smith

The daring and thoughtfully-rendered adventures of a filmmaker who travels to the ends of the earth to document animal lives.

For twenty years John Aitchison has been traveling the world to film wildlife for a variety of international TV shows, taking him to far-away places on every continent. The Shark and the Albatross tells the story of these journeys of discovery, and Aitchison’s encounters with animals in faraway and sometimes dangerous places. His destinations range from the remotest parts of Alaska and the Antarctic to India and China. Everywhere he goes, he describes—and photographs, in stunning colour—the triumphs and disasters in the lives of such animals, such as polar bears and penguins, seals and whales, sharks and birds, and wolves and lynxes, including their struggle to survive in a perilous world. And, as the author shows in several incidents that combine nail-biting tension with hair-raising hilarity, disaster can strike for filmmakers too.