Scientists tagging sharks off the Irish coast have tagged a surprisingly high number of Basking sharks this year: 50 specimens in just three days.

“I would normally expect to be lucky if we tagged 50 in a whole year,” said Dr Simon Berrow of the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group.

Basking SharkA record

Together with National Parks and Wildlife Service conservation ranger Emmett Johnston, Dr Berrow set out earlier this week to tag sharks off Donegal, as part of a project funded by the Heritage Council.

“In two hours last Monday we tagged 23 sharks, and we found 19 the following day – four of which had been tagged the day before,” Dr Berrow said. By the third day, they had tagged their 50^th basking shark.

Basking sharks were once a significant source of income for Irish whalers and the coastal towns of Galway and Waterford did for instance have street lights lit with basking shark oil as early as the 18^th century.

The importance of Basking sharks in Irish culture is evident in the number of names and monikers give to these peculiar creatures. In Irish, this “monster with sails” is known under the names Liabhán chor gréine (Great fish of the sun), Liop an dá (unwieldy beast with two finns) and Liabhán mór (great leviathan) – just to mention a few. The epithets “Fish of the sun” and “Sunfish” both pertains to its fondness of swimming just under the surface.

In the mid-1970s the Irish stopped their whaling, but the problems weren’t over for these sharks since they frequently ended up as by-catch in drift nets; a fishing method now outlawed in Irish waters. In addition to this, Norwegian whalers continued to hunt for shark off the Irish coast until 1986.

The Basking shark (Cetorhinus maximus) is listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, and is a protected species in Great Britain but not in Ireland. However, the European Union has just placed a moratorium on fishing for Basking sharks in these waters.

If you spot a Basking shark in Irish waters, the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group would very much like to know any details about the sighting. You can find more information at www.baskingshark.ie.

Want to know more about Basking sharks and where they head when the Northern Seas become too cold for comfort? Check out our earlier blog post on Sharks of the Caribbean.

The Snubfin dolphin (Orcaella heinsohni), recognized as a species as recently as 2005, have been spotted while utilizing a rare hunting technique previously only noted in the Irrawaddy dolphin (Orcaella brevirostris), a close relative of the Snubfin.

The unusual group hunting technique involves chasing the prey fish to the surface of the ocean and rounding them up by spitting jets of water at them. Once the fish is packed together in a reasonably small “cylinder”, the dolphins move in to devour them.

According to WWF Australia’s marine and coasts manager Lydia Gibson, the behaviour was first noticed in Australia off the Kimberley Coast.

We still know very little about the Snubfin dolphin, which lives along Australia’s northern coast in a number of locations off the Queensland and Northern Territory coasts, as well as the Kimberley region of Western Australia. It is listed as Near Threatened on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, chiefly due to habitat destruction. Since Snubfin dolphins live close to shore, they are also more likely to end up in gill nets and drown compared to more pelagic species of dolphin.