Hundreds of basking sharks can be seen breaching the water near the shores of Ireland in what can only be described as ‘nature at its most raw and powerful’ best.
And don’t worry, it could even happen close to home, as basking sharks have been known to do similar around our coastlines, too.
Hundreds of basking sharks breaching off the Clare Coast 🇮🇪 Have you ever seen anything like this? The courtship might be kicking off and I was lucky to be in the right place at the right time, for the second year in a row. Just off the coast of county Clare the headland was surrounded by hundreds of basking sharks, not cruising like they usually do, but breaching, circling and possible even courting. This kind of surface activity could be part of a rarely seen mating ritual, and it’s something researchers are just starting to understand. Irelands west coast never fails to blow my mind. Nature at its most raw, powerful and mysterious. These animals must not be interfered with and observed very carefully with cation. Hopefully bringing awareness to our beautiful marine life also helps to get it protected. Grá mór ☘️💚🇮🇪
Why do basking sharks breach?
Breaching behaviour is something we are lucky to encounter during the summer months. It occurs in the Irish Sea and also off the coast of Scotland.
Whilst we are not sure of the reason why basking sharks breach, there are some theories for this behaviour.
According to BaskingSharksScotland: “It was thought that basking sharks could be breaching to dislodge parasites, as seen in whales. Basking sharks are often sighted with parasitic lampreys, but research we contributed to discovered that parasites were not dislodged during breaching, which makes this theory unlikely to be the reason.
Researchers from the University of Exeter deployed satellite tags on sharks in the Hebridean Sea, which revealed new insights into the breaching behaviour of basking sharks.
The three sharks tagged made 67 breaches in 41 days, which revealed the speed, repeatability and times of day that this occurred.
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How often do basking sharks breach?
Seeing a basking shark breach is very much a ‘right place, right time’ moment – and there are very few who have been lucky enough to capture this on film or camera.
The University of Exeter team found that the three sharks they tagged could breach as often as six times a day.
Sometimes, these breaches occurred in quick succession; one individual was recorded making four breaches in 47 seconds.