How When & Where to Find Basking Sharks
The southern and southwestern coast of the Isle of Man is probably the best place in the world to watch basking sharks close inshore but you do need a few little hints. There are people who live on the Isle of Man who have never seen a shark! They soon would if they read this section.

This excellent cartoon is by Derek Pitman.
It says it all; sometimes we cannot see what is right under our noses!
When watching for basking sharks you need to know when and where to look for the
best chances of success. The short answer is
- Look mid-May to mid-August
- Look when there are settled calm seas
- Choose a sunny day
- Look for diving gannets, they often dive where there are basking sharks.
- Look for shiny oily slicks called tidal fronts. These are full of the plankton that the baskers eat.
- Watch for the flash of a wet basking dorsal fin. They flash like mirrors.
- Look from the shore with binoculars off the South/ Southwest coast of the Isle of Man.
- or
- Off a WiSE registered tourist boat from Port St Mary, Port Erin or Peel
- Choose a year when plenty of
sharks visit the Island! Some years we get hardly any.
How to find out About Recent Sightings:
Recent sightings are a good clue to where sharks will be. There are two ways to get the latest information about basking shark sightings:
-
Click on 'recent sightings' on this website.
-
Ring THE MANX BASKING SHARK WATCH INFORMATION LINE on 01624-801345 to hear
about the latest sightings and/or to report a sighting. Your information will
be put on the website and reported to the MCS Basking Shark Watch.
Where to Watch:
On the Isle of Man of course! It is a basking shark hotspot AND the sharks tend to be close to shore. Of all our sightings reports 2005-2008 a whopping 64% were within 1km of shore!
Map of the Basking Shark Sightings 1987-2003 for UK, Isle of Man and Ireland.
Data from the Marine Conservation Society Basking Shark Watch
The MCS Basking Shark Watch Project found that basking shark sightings were very
high on the Isle of Man, compared to the rest of British waters, especially
considering the relatively small length of the coastline. They also found that
shoal sizes were larger on the Island than elsewhere.
Manx Basking Shark Watch has been collecting your public sightings reports of basking sharks every year since 2005. We consistently find basking sharks sightings to be located on the South and Southwest coast of the isle of Man.

Map of Basking Shark Sightings MBSW 2008 for Isle of Man
The map of the Isle of Man shows that although
basking shark sightings occur Island-wide they are more common on the Southwest
and West coast starting from from Castletown and working clockwise around the
Island, off the Chasms and Spanish Head, around the Calf of Man, Bradda Head,
Port Erin, Fleshwick Bay and Northwards up the west coast towards Peel. The
coast from Niarbyl Bay past Dalby, Glen Maye, behind Peel Hill and off Peel
Castle, Peel breakwater and Peel headlands can be excellent areas to see
basking sharks when they are here in any numbers. These places are areas of
high plankton concentration so basking sharks congregate there.
This shark was off Fleshwick Bay, the Isle of Man.
Picture: Pauline Oliver
High plankton concentrations occur where ocean fronts are close inshore off
headlands and islands, and in bays where tidal slacks occur. Local scuba divers
say that one of the best times to see basking sharks is on the flood tide at
Niarbyl where the tidal flow streaming from the south meets the calm water of
Niarbyl Bay. It is possible to see basking sharks from most of these sites
whether you are on the cliffs or in a boat.
A close encounter from a boat off Niarbyl, the Isle of Man. Please observe the
Basking Shark Code, the engine must be in neutral or preferably
switched off. The engine might disturb the sharks and there is a danger that
the shark might get hurt by the propeller!
Picture: Shane Stigant.
The Marine Conservation Society Basking Shark Watch Project has shown that shoal
sizes were largest in the Northwest. This is not evident from the map. The
biggest shoal was 100 sharks off Jurby head in July 1991.
What you Might See:
If
you are lucky you may see a shark basking or feeding with its enormous mouth
agape. The first sign of a shark is its large dorsal fin showing above the surface of the water. If the water is clear and it is a calm day, you might see the white mouth as it feeds just under the surface of the water. This is particulary likely if you are seeing the animal from above, from a boat or a cliff-top.
The first sign of a basking shark is normally its dorsal fin. You can also see the white mouth in this picture.
Picture: Pauline Oliver
If you are really lucky you may see a group of shark engaged in
courtship behaviour such as following one another closely, circling or
breaching. See the section on reproduction and courtship for some pictures of these behaviours.
Even if you don't see a single shark you will definitely have seen
seals, sea birds and some of the most beautiful coastline in the world, so it
will be good fun trying!
Some Extra Clues:
Look for tidal fronts. If you look off headlands or off the mouth of a bay on a calm day you might see oily, sometimes frothy, slicks in the water. These tidal fronts occur where a warm water body meets a cooler one. Plankton concentrates here and so if you can identify a tidal front you should concentrate your binoculars here. Basking sharks often feed in zig-zags through these plankton rich tidal fronts. At the base of Bradda Head the plankton sometimes piles up under the cliffs and a 'vortex' of plankton occurs. This means that the sharks swim in circles and zig zags through the rich plankton. The same happens on the Port Erin side of the Sound, near Kitterland where the currents swirl around and concentrate the plankton.
Look for large seabirds called gannets diving into the water. This is a powerful indicator that basking sharks might be nearby. This is because if you see many of them diving in they are after small fish at the surface. The small fish are after the same plankton that the basking sharks are wanting.
Look for flashes on the water: The almost black dorsal fin of the basking shark is very flexible. If it is a sunny day the sun reflects off the fin like a flashing mirror. Watch for this.
Some Common Errors:
It is a common occurrence to hear keen observers pointing excitedly at birds,
seals, scuba divers, lobster pots, dolphins, whales or boats and shouting that
they have spotted a basking shark. Shags and cormorants are the worst. When they put their wings up a characteristic cry is "It's a sha-----ag": tends to go up. This might cause amusement but it can be rather frustrating!
Looking at the picture below you could be forgiven for thinking that it is a shark fin BUT if you look at the next picture you can see that it is a seal. Seals often bob upright in the water whilst resting. It is called 'bottling because they look a bit like a bottle bobbing around in the water.

A seal looking very like a basking shark dorsal fin: Photo Neil Ward

The same seal looking more like a seal head! : Photo by Neil Ward
This picture of a minke whale was taken off the east coast near Dhoon Glen. The animals is much larger than a basking shark and the fin is much smaller in relation to the body size: Photo by John Donnelly.
This Risso's dolphin could be mistaken for a basking shark fin from a distance. Rissos photographed off Marine Drive Douglas. We DO get basking sharks there but very rarely and only at the very beginning of the season. Photo by John Donnelly.
But this Risso's dolphin could not really be mistaken for a basking shark because basking shark leaps are far less elegant than this! Photo by John Donnelly.
We also get some very charming small harbour porpoise, just over a meter long. On flat clam days you might see a fleeting glimpse of a small triangular dorsal fin slipping just above the water surface. Here are some charming pictures of a mother harbour porpoise and her baby taken on the Port Erin side of the Sound June 2009 by Carol Manzi. Well done Carol, they are really hard to photograph.
This is another harbour porpoise taken on the same day, also by Carol. Yes, it's a fin, yes it's dark BUT it's too small, too quick and bending the wrong way to be a basking shark! Basking sharks tend to bend and flex side to side, porpoises, whales and dolphins have arched backs.
Happy Watching and don't forget to report your sighting and send us your photos!
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