Here I am immersed in an oceanic world, 40km offshore with 120m of water below me, and I can’t get that cute and crazy song out of my head. Baby shark, do do do do do do…

Pinkfong’s YouTube version of Baby Shark has become the most-viewed video of all time and I find I’m just as consumed by the meme as everyone else. But what’s the story behind baby shark?

Sometime in the 1970s a very strange campfire song started being sung by children at American summer camps. Various versions emerged involving increasingly gruesome scenes complete with physical gestures. These were not quite the happy anthropomorphism of mummy, daddy and of course baby shark that we know today. It’s only speculation, but perhaps no coincidence that the 1975 release of Jaws had firmly embedded the fear of sharks, especially the great white, in the American psyche.

This beautiful baby shark is a blue shark (Prionace glauca) and is perhaps only a couple of weeks old, its youth betrayed by the strange little caudal extension trailing from its tail. When this baby shark grows up I’d be just as happy swimming alongside her as I am now.

If we’d been out here with Pinkfong’s baby shark and mummy shark just happened along, perhaps I’d be thinking, we’re gonna need a bigger boat!

For now at least there have been no confirmed records of great white sharks in Irish waters, so I’m more than content floating out here with the blue sharks and children’s songs stuck in my head.