A missing satellite tag which fell off a species of endangered shark has been found washed up on the Isle of Wight.
Steve and Teresa Tearle, from Brighstone, made it their mission to locate the tracker after seeing Isle of Wight Radio's appeal.
They say they searched for several hours on Thursday, along with a number of Islanders, but to no avail.
Using his scanner, Steve was able to hear the tag but was still unable to find it. That was until his spark of ingenuity.
"Having an interest in electronics and a passion about the worrying decline in our natural world, finding this tag was just too much of a challenge to resist", Steve said.
"In my sleep I had the brainwave to remove the antenna on my scanner to make it less sensitive. I then found the tag within 5 mins this morning. I now realise it looked like every other pebble on the beach."
The tag, which was placed on a Porbeagle Shark was located on Compton Beach, camouflaged in with pebbles.
French conservation programme APECS were playing to use it to track the shark's movements, to better understand and raise awareness of the species.
Steve said:
"The work research organisations like APECS do is fundamental understanding, raising awareness and ultimately protecting critically endangered species like the Porbeagle shark, so we really wanted to help and find this tracker. Porbeagle Sharks are just incredible creatures.
"Sharks like them have swam in our seas for hundreds of millions of years so it’s quite depressing to see how the impacts from too many humans has pushed their population into a massive decline in the blink of an eye."
Steve and Teresa are in touch with APECs, which is said "chuffed".
He is now planning on posting the tag back to France where the data will be extracted.
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