The Manx Basking Shark Watch

Welcome to the Manx Wildlife Trust's Manx Basking Shark Watch website. The basking shark Cetorhinus maximus, is the second largest fish in the world. every summer, from mid May to mid August, the Isle of Man is a basking shark hotspot, having particularly high densities of basking sharks compared to elsewhere in the British Isles. Most basking shark sightings are reported within 1km of land along a 40km stretch of easily accessible coastline on the south and south eastern shores of the Island. When the seas are calm and the weather is settled and sunny, the plankton concentrates at the surface of the sea and the basking sharks feed on this plankton close inshore. If you know where to look you can watch them from the shore, no need to even get in a boat! Here is the Manx Basking Shark Watch Code of Conduct for boat users. You may even be lucky enough to see basking shark courtship activity close to shore. Basking sharks are listed as endangered on the IUCN red list. Some genetic work indicates that there may only be 8200 of them left in the whole world. They are protected from being hunted or harassed in the Isle of Man and in many, but not all, parts of the world. Learn more on this website. The basking shark picture was taken off Port Erin breakwater by Dr Rohan Holt.

A Conference: Basking Sharks: A Global Perspective: The Manx Government, Manx Basking Shark Watch and the Save our Seas Foundation are hosting a conference, "BASKING SHARKS: A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE" on the Isle of Man August 3rd-6th 2009. Experts in basking shark tagging, genetics and conservation will come from around the world to discuss ways to study, conserve and manage this wonderful animal. It will be followed by the UK Wildlife Trusts' Basking Shark Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP) meeting at the same venue. Download these 4 documents about the conference. (1) Flyer for Conference. (2) Application to attend conference (3) Information about how to travel to the Isle of Man and to find accommodation there. (4) Local rates for Manx residents. Student members of the Challenger Society may be able to obtain funding of £120 towards attending conferences (see http://www.noc.soton.ac.uk/OTHERS/CSMS).

The DAFF Marine Protected Area Project: We live in exciting times for marine conservation and the Manx government is currently asking the public what they want from a Marine Protected area. Learn more on http://www.gov.im/daff/Wildlife/sites/marine.xml An MPA should be in place on the Island in the next 3 years.

This Website: This is a truly MANX basking shark site. It contains the latest Isle of Man basking shark sightings, a section about how to find basking sharks off the isle of Man and another for your own basking shark stories. Most of the photographs were taken in Manx waters. this is THE place to learn about basking shark biology, law and conservation issues. Facts about basking shark behaviour, courtship and where they go in the winter anre compiled from recent scientific discoveries and from historical anatomical work that is unlikely to be repeated. there is even a childrens section that includes 'Revolting facts about basking sharks"!

Public Sighting Scheme. Report Your Basking Shark Sightings to Us: We would like YOU to help us find out how many basking sharks visit the Isle of Man every year, and to help us study what they are doing whilst they're here! Report your sighting online on this website. Please put the latitude-longitude position of your basking shark sighting on with Google Earth. You can download Google Earth at http://earth.google.com. It is VERY easy to use. We have 4 years of public sightings data provided by you and the results are very interesting. You can view some of them in the results section of this website. The map at left shows all our sightings reports for 2008. All public sightings data is shared with the Marine Conservation Society's Basking Shark Watch. Satellite Tagging of Basking Sharks: Manx Basking Shark Watch has tagged 8 basking sharks with MK10 PAT archival satellite tags in 2007/8. We plan to deploy 3 more in 2009. To read more about these tags link to- http://www.wildlifecomputers.com. This work is done in collaboration with Dr Mauvis Gore of The Save our Seas Foundation and Dr Fiona Gell of the Manx Government's Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Farming. In 2009 we will also be collaborating with the French APECS team. We aim to find out how long these tagged sharks stay in Manx waters and where they go after they leave them. These tags cost £3500 each to deploy and decode. We are most grateful for financial sponsorship from the Gough Richie Foundation, Tower Insurance, Drummond Enterprises, Global Ocean and the Manx Government's DAFF and DTL. One of tagged basking sharks, an 8m long sexually mature female called Tracy the Tower Insurance shark was the first tagged basking shark to travel across the Atlantic. She travelled 9588 km, diving to 1264m in the 82 days she was tagged (see map from Gore et al 2008).Download Gore et al 2008 here

This result provides the first evidence for a link between European and American populations. This finding has huge implications for conservation management of this species, listed as endangered on the IUCN Red list. They are protected from disturbance and exploitation in the NE Atlantic but they are still exploited elsewhere in the world. We aim to protect them worldwide.

Putative Courtship Behaviour: Manx Basking Shark Watch is also studying basking shark social swimming. This putative courtship behaviour is seen in June and July (see Mal Kelly's picture of two sharks parallel swimming below).

The MBSW Team: Manx Basking Shark Watch (MBSW) is run by a team of 11 volunteers and 2 Manx Wildlife Trust staff. Marine biologist Jackie Hall, voluntary Marine Officer for the Manx Wildlife trust, is the MBSW coordinator. Graham Hall, an engineer, is the technical and boat officer. MBSW is headed by a steering committee, comprising Jackie and Graham, Dr Richard Hartnoll (chairman), Duncan Bridges (director of the Manx Wildlife Trust) and Dr Fiona Gell (the Manx Government’s Wildlife and Conservation Officer for DAFF). Eleanor Stone, the newly appointed Marine officer for the Manx Wildlife Trust will work closely with Manx Basking Shark Watch. We could not run the public sighting scheme without the invaluable help of 8 volunteers. Jackie and Graham run their basking shark research boat ‘Happy Jack’ out of Port St Mary in the south of the Island. MBSW has three aims-

1: Raising public awareness of basking sharks: we do this by running a website (www.manxbaskingsharkwatch.com) and an online public sighting scheme and basking shark phoneline (01624 801345). We also give talks and leaflets to schools and to the public. We encourage media articles and enable film crews to film basking sharks in Manx waters.

We collaborate with other scientific groups including APECS and the Save our Seas Foundation. We have helped to organize a conference: “Basking Sharks: A Global Perspective”.

The text has been written by Jackie Hall (MSc, BSc, BA) Voluntary Marine Officer for the Manx Wildlife Trust. This website, with it's online reporting system, has been constructed by Paul Steer of Delta IT Services www.deltait.co.uk. He also constructed the website for Manx Whale and Dolphin Watch. Eleanor Stone and Tom Felce have done an excellent job of mapping the 2005-2008 public sightings scheme results. See their preliminary analysis of these results on the 'results' section.

This website will evolve as you send in your basking shark sightings and stories. We hope you enjoy it. We would love to have more local photographs of basking sharks so please send them in. If you have a story, sighting or photograph to contribute please let us know.