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A war hero has spent two days and nights swimming among sharks for a new documentary.

James Glancy, 35, of Wimbledon, served three combat tours in Afghanistan as an officer in the Royal Marines and Special Forces, and was awarded a Conspicuous Gallantry Cross by the Queen after a counter-terrorism mission in 2012.

The ex-soldier took on the survival attempt with Paul de Gelder, 40, an Australian former paratrooper who lost his right arm and leg to a bull shark in Sydney Harbour in 2009.

Armed only with poles and a net, the pair spent two days and nights off the Bahamas . They used Mr de Gelder’s prosthetic arm to gather rainwater to drink and “cuddled each other at night” to ward off hypothermia .

Mr Glancy said: “We were with bull sharks, they are the most aggressive, and mainly oceanic white tips — if you fall in the sea it is generally these that will kill you… We tied ourselves together with rope, and at night we had to have a protective net or we would have got eaten.” He said they could push the sharks away when necessary as “their nose is very sensitive”.

Mr Glancy, a director of Veterans For Wildlife, wanted to show how sharks need protection. He said: “Between 70 and 100 million sharks a year are killed for their fins, it is horrendous.” Sharkwrecked will be shown on the Discovery Channel.