I spent six days on a small fishing boat in the middle of the English Channel in July trying to catch a thresher shark. The weather was fickle, even at the height of summer.

My colleague, ecologist Lucy Hawkes, and I were with two anglers who probably hold more experience of Channel thresher sharks than anyone alive. Between us, we caught nothing.

Fourteen trips later, after countless more hours at sea, the anglers caught a thresher shark and it was electronically tagged – a first in England and the northeast Atlantic.

Thresher sharks can grow up to 5.8m long and they use their long whip-like tail to hunt in packs by herding shoals of fish together. Tags can shed light on their long migrations across coastal areas and open oceans.

The joy, excitement and elation we felt was tenfold for the anglers who have fished these animals for years. Together we eagerly await news from our thresher shark; about this time next year the tag will detach, float to the sea surface and transmit, perhaps revealing new and unexpected insights to us all.

Many of the anglers our teams work with are fanatical about their fish: where they go, why, and how that has changed over decades. This is a kind of expertise scientists and governments don’t always know how to recognise or have easy access to.

Our partnership with anglers is now central to how we’re working to improve conservation of pelagic sharks (those that live in the open ocean), thanks to a new £1.2 million grant from Natural England as part of its flagship species recovery programme.

This project focuses on blue sharks, porbeagles and tope........

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