Bounty was out fishing off Newquay yesterday when eagled eyed skipper Ant spotted an awesome 7m “Basking Shark!”….Passengers were treated to “up close and personal” views from deckside …Ant called skipper Chris who was out on a Sea Safari aboard “Atlantic Diver”…who redesignated his passengers as shark spotters and went to look for it. The huge dorsal fin was spotted first followed by sighting of a second smaller shark. They fed mouths open wide in circular movements gentley and quietly together to the delight of the lucky passengers.
The sightings of Basking Sharks have been down generally around the Western UK coastline by an average of 35% this year due perhaps to the lack of zoo plankton at surface, on which the sharks feed. It may be that the sharks are feeding deeper down , so we are not spotting their fins breaking surface . Many are turning up in Scotland, so more likely they have moved on through following a richer food source. All of this means that yesterday’s skippers and passengers were the incredibly lucky to see such a rare sighting!!
We launched a shark expedition later that evening but the sharks had gone down…however we were treated to an extremely close view of a Sunfish . Spotted by Tricia .Sadly it had an injury to its right fin but it came right up close to our stern and stopped to watch us watching it…People watching….brilliant!!
