Andrew Fox follows his father Rodney in South Australia to become a global authority on the great white sharks

Andrew Fox (inset) and his keen observation of great white sharks led into photography with a library of more than 1,000 catalogued images of individual sharks.
Main image courtesy Andrew Fox Shark Photography

Andrew Fox followed his father Rodney in South Australia by becoming globally recognised globally as a leading authority on great white sharks.

Fox was born into a life of sharks, propelled by his father’s transforming experience from victim of a fierce great white shark encounter off Aldinga beach, south of Adelaide, in 1963, to a passionate advocate for conserving the creatures and promoting education about them.  

Andrew Fox’s childhood background was his father Rodney’s many planning sessions for the first-ever documentaries filming great white sharks. The oldest of three children, Andrew was the one who inherited his father’s affinity and fascination for sharks. He loved the beach and spent hours exploring rock pools.

Rodney Fox took the seven-year-old Andrew on his first shark expedition – to the dismay of mother Kay. Andrew Fox saw his first great white shark at night at South Australia’s Memory Cove – always remembering that torchlit image of the huge head of a large shark lifting above the water to view him. This started his sharks obsession.

After he finished high school, Andrew studied environmental science at Adelaide’s Flinders University and began working in On + In Surf Shop, part of the family business. Finishing his degree, Andrew Fox focused on running the shark tours, started by his father, while researching the behaviour and ecology of the great whites.

Fox became adept at closely observing the great whites: behaviour, social hierarchy, the way they move, pigment variations, breeding habits and even personalities. He was able to identify (by name) hundreds of individual sharks. His keen observation led into photography. He build a library of more than 1,000 catalogued images of  individual sharks.

In 2001, Andrew and Rodney Fox with Dr. Rachel Robbins started the Fox Shark Research Foundation. Andrew Fox began taking over the helm from his father, and making Rodney Fox Shark Expeditions more of a full-time tourist experience, with its surface shark cage and the world’s only ocean floor shark cage, to fund his research.