Ulster Basking Shark Found Off African Coast

The discovery of a Donegal basking shark off the western coast of Africa is throwing into question many theories on the animal’s habits.

The shark, named Banba, was originally tagged off Malin Head but was rediscovered some 3,000 miles away off the coast of Senegal.

It was previously accepted that basking sharks were only found in temperate waters, but the discovery has offered an insight into where the five-metre-long female spends the winter.

The shark was tagged under the Monster Munch Basking Shark Community Awareness Project, run by the Irish Basking Shark Study Group with Inishowen Development Partnership and Queen’s University Belfast.

Most tagged sharks travel one or two hundred miles in winter and return to coastal waters in the summer when the amount of food available increases again.

Basking shark researcher Emmett Johnston said: "Up until now there have been lots of different theories put forward about the sharks and one was that they hibernated over the winter because there wasn't enough food in the waters around the north Atlantic.

"Other people said they went offshore and they have been tracked offshore in the winter.

"But we have been theorising that they head further south to where the food is, like the larger whales from this area."

Basking sharks are said to eat mainly plankton, which is a type of insect found in the sea.

But Dr Simon Berrow, co-founder of the study group, said plankton was not found in tropical waters.

"It is in stark contrast to the type of waters that they are associated with," he said.

"It is a very different kind of habitat — it is akin to finding a polar bear in the desert."

(IT)