Early Hot Spells Increase Shark Presence Off Donegal Coast

June 22, 2007

Release from: Kate Heaney
Donegal News (Ireland)

Shark activity off the Donegal coast has increased due to the early warm weather, it emerged this week.

Sailors and anglers have spotted a variety of these very large fish off the coastline from Horn Head to Donegal Bay. The common black whale also put in an appearance about a month ago.

The Rathmullan based skipper of the Enterprise and Swilly Explorer Neil Anthony Doherty this week confirmed they had seen different types of sharks while fishing off the mouth of the Swilly and further west towards where the remains of the Laurentic lie at the bottom of the sea.

"In recent weeks we have seen the early arrival of basking sharks and porbeagel shark close over the site of the Laurentic. They are pretty big and normally swim about in pairs. I think there is a school of them in and around the mouth of the Swilly.

"We have seen porbeagel sharks which are part of the same group as the great white but these wouldn't harm anyone unless they were trapped," Neil pointed out.

On a fishing trip last week with a group of visitors from a Derry Hotel an amateur caught an 84 pound shark and managed to reel him in in 20 minutes.

Neil attributed the increased sighting of sharks off the coast to the early warm weather and the shoals of sand eel and mackerel in around the coast.

"The temperature of the water at present is 16.8 degrees, warm for this time of the year. We are seeing more sharks in this area than ever before. They are plankton eaters. However when one is caught you need to be very careful of those big teeth when removing the hooks to throw him back in the water," he added.

BASKING OFF HORN HEAD

Creeslough man Peter O'Toole got a clear shot of two large basking sharks off Horn Head last Sunday in the clear blue seas.

An amateur photographer, he got a bird's eye view of the pair feeding on plankton close inshore.

"I had a tele-zoom lens which allowed me to capture the images of these filter feeders just under Horn Head. I watched them for an hour or so as this is the first time I have seen basking sharks off this part of the coast. It was a very warm day, ideal conditions for them to follow the plankton inshore," Peter said.

Shark would normally be seen around the Donegal coast in July and August, but according to Neil, the warm weather has brought them close to shore in greater numbers this year.

"As the temperatures have risen over the last few summers, the numbers of basking and porbeagel sharks coming here to feed has also risen," he added.

Basking sharks are normally found in temperate oceans, usually during the summer months and have long been summer visitors to the shores of southern Ireland.

It is thought that basking sharks come into our inshore waters, not just to feed but, to find partners to mate.

Sharks swim with their mouths open most of the time and filter around 2,000 gallons of water per hour in order to extract the plankton from the water.