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Welcome to the Manx Basking Shark Watch website
The Manx Basking Shark Watch is a Manx Wildlife Trust Project.
The basking shark Cetorhinus maximus, is the second largest fish in the world! They are listed as endangered on the IUCN red list. Some genetic work indicates that there may only be 8200 breeding females 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. There are sections about how to see them, report them, scientific information, news, local boats and much more. The kids section is particularly good for schools.
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 western 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. You may even be lucky enough to see basking shark courtship activity close to shore.
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. The photographs were taken in Manx waters.
This is a picture of the left side of the dorsal fin of a distinctive shark called we have called 'Lunar" He is a male of 6.0-7.0 length, he was seen around Port Erin, The Sound and off Chicken Rock on 23rd, 26th and 29th of July 2010.
Basking sharks can be very big indeed. This one is next to 'Gemini' a 10.5m long boat belonging to Bob Taylor. You can see the shark's large central dorsal fin and its tail fin so its nose is about where the boat rail is. Photo: John Chorlton.
A basking shark seen through the water from Happy Jack: Photo by Eleanor Stone
We want your sightings of Basking Sharks around the Isle of Man!
If this is your first sighting to report, please click the 'Register' tab at the top of the page. Once you are registered, you can use the 'Report' tab to report your sighting. The more details you can provide, the better. If you can, please find the position of your basking shark on Google Earth and enter the latitude/longitude on the sighting report. Click here to download Google Earth.
The 3 main aims of the MBSW are:
1: Raising public awareness of basking sharks: We do this by running this 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.
2: Research into basking sharks: We do this to enable the government to make informed wildlife management decisions. We hope that this will help to save this endangered animal.
We study basking shark courtship behaviour, migratory behaviour locally and world-wide (by archival satellite tagging and fin ID). We also study the movements, behaviour and distribution of basking sharks within Manx waters. We are trying to catalogue all the individual basking sharks that visit our waters. It appears that we do not have so very many sharks and we are trying to establish how many that is. This involves getting dorsal fin photos from each shark, establishing its sex with a pole camera and getting a size estimate relative to our 6.1m long boat HAPPY JACK. We then take a DNA swab from the dorsal fin with swab on the end of a long pole. This does not hurt the shark in any way. The DNA is being analysed in Aberdeen by Dr Les Noble and Prof Mahmood Shivji in America.
3: Coordination of worldwide scientific activity into basking sharks: 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”.
Basking Sharks are Endangered. They are at risk from many threats, including damage from boat propellers. The underwater photo below shows a very damaged dorsal fin. We urge all boat users to keep a careful eye out when in basking shark hotspots.
Photograph by Graham Hall via a pole-camera
The MBSW Team:
Manx Basking Shark Watch (MBSW) is run by a team of 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), Eleanor Stone (marine officer for the Manx Wildlife Trust) and Dr Fiona Gell (the Manx Government’s Marine Biodiversity officer). We could not run the public sighting scheme without the invaluable help of many volunteers. Jackie and Graham run their basking shark research boat ‘Happy Jack’ out of Port St Mary in the south of the Island.
In 2010 and 2011 we were joined by the Dolphineers, a group of enthusiastic volunteers who have been invaluable to both this project and to the Manx Whale and Dolphin Group. They man the research boat "Happy Jack' and do effort based watches for basking sharks, whales and dolphins from the shore.
Scientific Papers Including Manx Basking Shark Watch Research
- Gore et al 2008: Gore Mauvis A, David Rowat, Jackie Hall, Fiona R. Gell and Rupert Ormond. Transatlantic migration and deep mid-ocean diving by basking shark. Biol Lett. dpi.1098/rsbl.2008.0147. Published online
- Hardman et al 2011 BSc hons, University of Plymouth: 'Concordance of genetic and fin photo identification in the basking shark Cetorhinus maximus in the Noth East Atlantic.'
- Stephan et al 2010 E. Stephan, H. Gadenne, A.Jung, A. Lafranc, J.Hall, G. Hall, S. Bessudo, G.Soler, F.Royer, B. Calmettes. Galway EEZ 2010. Satellite Tracking of Basking Sharks in the North East Atlantic.
- Stephan et al 2011: http://www.manxbaskingsharkwatch.com/uploads/Final_report_-_Sur_les_traces_du_requin_pelerin_-_Feb_2011.pdf
This Website.
The text has been written by Jackie Hall (MSc, BSc hons, 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 2005-2009 public sightings scheme results.
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.
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