2008 Sightings

Despite the difficult summer weather 2008 was another bumper year for basking sharks in the Isle of Man.

Table 1: Number of Sightings Reports of one or more sharks 2008
	May	June	July	August	Total
2008	50	271	179	64	564

The 2008 basking shark season has been very successful for the Manx Wildlife Trust's Manx Basking Shark Watch. This is the fourth whole year of MBSW and it becomes more obvious with every passing year that the Isle of Man's beautiful south and southwest coastline is probably the best place in the world to watch and study basking sharks.

As you can see on map 1 the pattern of most sightings being around the South and Southwest of the Island is the same as previous years.

MBSW had 50 sightings reports in May. By comparison we had 58 sightings in 2007 As usual, the season started with more sharks in the South and not so many up towards Peel.

In June there were 271 sightings with lots of them being very close to land, most notably in Port Erin Bay and off Peel.

Although there were 179 sightings reports in July 2008 this was a lot less than the 298 sightings reports in July 2007. We THINK that this might be because of the very rough weather. The sharks were probably there but feeding under the very rough water surface. Basking sharks feed at the surface where people can see them when the weather is warm and the sea flat calm, we didn't have a lot of that! Also, because the weather wasn't as good as in 2007 there would not have been so many people out looking for the sharks.

August 2008 saw 64 shark reports compared to 174 in August 2007 but I suspect that 2007 might have been one of those all-round good years that happen occasionally.

Just in case we start giving the impression that 2008 was a basking shark wash-out let's remember that elsewhere in the world you normally need to get on a boat to see one. Here you can see them with the naked eye, or binoculars, from many points such as the Sound, Port Erin, Fleshwick, Niarbyl and around Peel. This is fantastic news as they are protected by law from harassment and injury so the shore is safest for avoiding being accused of this. Some wildlife safe boats (WiSE registered) take members of the public out, however, and these are listed on our website.

You need warm, settled weather and flat calm seas to see basking sharks at their best. Despite having the worst wild and windy seas for much of the season we still received 564 sighting reports that added up to 1812 individual sharks, 74 in May, 874 in June, 700 in July and 164 in August.

The season started spectacularly with the publication of the scientific paper about 'Tracy' the Tower Insurance shark, going all the way across the Atlantic, (Gore et al 2008). This work has huge implications for basking shark conservation efforts. It is the first work to definitively link the Eastern and Western Atlantic basking shark populations. Basking sharks are protected from harassment and hunting in some parts of the world but not in others. How tragic if a basking shark that is so admired for it's natural grace and astounding size in the Isle of Man becomes shark's fin soup in some other part of the world. Let's hope that this paper is the start of international efforts to get them protected worldwide.

Graham and Jackie Hall bought the basking shark research boat 'Happy Jack' with their own money. This allowed the start of a three year study into basking shark courtship behaviour and allowed much easier tagging and underwater film work. We also had 7 visiting wildlife film crews, 12 Manx basking shark stories in the international press, 3 groups of visiting shark scientists and we put 5 satellite tags on! Remembering that the basking shark season is only about 100 days long you can see that we at Manx Basking Shark Watch were a little busy! We are in the process of writing a report for the whole 4 years that MBSW has been running. This is a heavy load on an organization run entirely by volunteers and relying on funding donations from kind sponsors! We are hoping to get a paid Marine Officer at the Manx Wildlife Trust to help with the work load from now on. We are still looking for £10,000 a year for the next 3 years towards that. If anyone has any ideas about how to raise these final one third of the funds please ring Duncan Bridges, Director of the Manx Wildlife Trust on 01624 801985

MANY THANKS TO OUR VOLUNTEERS Manx Basking Shark Watch is run completely by volunteers, and coordinated by me (Jackie Hall), also a volunteer. This year I was joined full time in the summer by my husband Graham. He is an engineer and his skill at putting together technical equipment and looking after the boat was invaluable. With Graham's help and a shoestring budget we were able to put together scientific equipment that was the envy of every visiting scientist. We could not run MBSW without the generous help of volunteers. We count everyone who sends their sighting in as a volunteer. Running the website and phoneline is a huge task. This year we had a very effective rota going with seven volunteers taking turns to man the website and the phone line. Thankyou so very much to Richard Hartnoll, Phil North, Kim Kneen, Christina Johnstone, Anne Hills, Duncan Bridges, Mike Bates and Chris Bates for this vital part of the work.

MAPPING THREE YEARS OF BASKING SHARK SIGHTINGS We are most grateful to Eleanor Stone and Tom Felce for their excellent work mapping the 4 years of our sightings. DAFF very kindly paid them to do this (congratulations Tom and Eleanor this is the first time that anyone has been paid to do work for MBSW)! Having said this, they did a huge amount of work and I suspect the hourly rate would work out to be rather small but the principal is there!

THE IMPORTANCE OF SPONSORSHIP MBSW relies on sponsorship for boat running costs and scientific equipment such as satellite tags and underwater pole cameras. We cannot thank our financial sponsors enough, we could not do much of the scientific work without it. 2008 saw some very generous sponsorship from the Manx Government (Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries and the Department of Tourism and Leisure), Ken Watterson, Tower Insurance Douglas, The Gough Ritchie Foundation, Dennis Drummond and Global Ocean. Special thanks are owed to Anne Hills and Duncan Bridges, director of Manx Wildlife Trust. They were instrumental in raising funds to enable us to continue with the research.

FILM CREWS We had 7 film crews here for a total of 41 days of filming our basking sharks on the water. This is excellent in many ways as it is good for the Isle of Man wildlife tourism industry, spreading the word about how fantastic our basking shark watching is here on the Isle of Man. However, it did get a bit much for our protected basking sharks at one point and it is probable that DAFF will only be issuing three in-water film licenses for 2009. We had the BBC here filming for their new series "Life", Border ITV came twice, Nick Caloyianis Productions came from the USA to film our collaboration with American scientists, their work often goes to National Graphic. We had a French Film team called Galatee Films making a very big production sponsored by Walt Disney.

The Belgian film team called: "Dieren in Nesten" came for the second year running. This year they got their footage!

An Irish: film team called Crossing the Line Films filmed our collaboration with Irish scientists.

Cepa gilpin of Crossing the Line Films very kindly gave us this photo of Graham and Jackie Hall attempting to tag a shark in the rain. It says something about the difficulties of conducting scientific research with a film crew watching your every move!

SATELLITE TAGGING: ITS CONTRIBUTION TO CONSERVATION WORK AIMING TO STOP SHARK FINNING WORLD-WIDE The tagging work is very expensive at £3000 per tag but it gives us vital information about where they go and what they are doing. We put three tags on in 2007, with one tagged shark going across the Atlantic. This amazing result puts a whole new light on the urgent need for WORLD-WIDE basking shark conservation measures to be taken. Manx Basking Shark Watch hopes to join the Shark Alliance soon. This group of scientists is calling for world wide protection for all shark species. Every year tens of millions of sharks are killed for their fins in order that people can eat shark fin soup. This is a very cruel practice, the fins are cut off and the shark is thrown back into the sea to die a slow and painful death. This is totally unsustainable as sharks are slow breeders. Sharks of all kinds are a vital part of our seas healthy ecosystem. This practice must be stopped. Our tagging work lends power to the scientific argument against shark finning. PLEASE never eat shark fin soup, you might be eating one of those wonderful basking sharks that you watched in Port Erin Bay! If our basking sharks travel world-wide, which seems increasingly likely, we need to try to protect them in the whole world, not just some of it as the situation is now.

This year we put 5 satellite tags on. Four are giving us vital information. I cannot tell you the details of this years tags until the scientific papers are published but they are very interesting (if not quite as spectacular as last year)! Phil the 8m male shark's tag came off after 120 days, as programmed to do so. Colin and David are both mature male sharks of about 7m length. Their tags have both given us plenty of information via satellite but we have not yet retrieved the tags. They may still turn up on a beach like Liz's tag did. Liz is a 7m female, her tag turned up on a Cornish beach, rescued by Simon Zeal and his dog Millie. The photo below was kindly given to us by Peter Glaser.

This means that we get much more detailed information about what she was up to when her tag was on, all very useful to aid basking shark wildlife management decisions for coming years. The fifth tag came off immediately but we can use it again next year when it has been mended in the USA.

We already have 3 tags to re-use for 2009, these are Dennis's tag from 2007, Liz's tag and the one that came off on deployment but we retrieved it. We are hoping that Tower Insurance and Dennis Drummond might fund a further two, so we are well on track to do more useful tagging work for 2009. If you would like to sponsor a tag or any other equipment please ring Duncan Bridges on 01624 801985.

STUDY OF SOCIAL SWIMMING BEHAVIOUR The first years of the public sending in sighting reports made it quite clear that there was a lot of very special basking shark social swimming behaviour going on in Manx waters. MBSW is studying this rare behaviour. If you see groups of basking sharks swimming in formation, in circles, parallel swimming, nose to tail swimming, swimming one besides but slightly behind the other, or basking sharks breaching, that is, leaping clear out of the water, please do several things. Note what you see carefully, take photographs and retreat slowly and carefully! PLEASE report what you see to us. It is important not to hang around as it is possible that you are disturbing their courtship rituals and this is illegal. It is also not impossible that a 7 tonne shark might land on your boat unexpectedly so it's best to leave the area.

SUMMARY All in all it was an amazing year. Please keep the reports coming in so that we can continue the good work! Fingers crossed that we might have the other 3 tags returned to us and that we get the rest of the funding for the Manx Wildlife Trust Marine Officer post!

Many, many thanks to all of you who contribute to Manx Basking Shark Watch. we could not do it without you!