If you miss it on the television you can see it again at this link. 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/isleofman/hi/front_page/newsid_8888000/8888985.stm

Sarah Corker the local BBC news reporter came out with us today and had a remarkable experience. We took 5 complete DNA samples as part of our shark individual ID catalogue and saw a feeding group of basking sharks just North of Peel. The back drop of Peel Traditional Boat Day was quite spectacular. We also saw some Rissos Dolphins.

I understand that it might be on BBC NW on Wednesday 4th August at 18.30. If you miss this it might be possible to catch it online on the BBC website later. 

 Below are some photographs from the day we spent with Sarah. 

 

 A Rissos Dolphin off the Drinking Dragon.

A basking shark makes a star appearance in the middle of Peel Traditional Boat Day. 

  

Graham Hall of Manx Basking Shark Watch being interviewed by Sarah Corker of the BBC. 

Please come along and join the Manx Whale and Dolphin Watch at this big watching event. There will be plenty of binoculars and telescopes on hand, as well as 'The Dolphineers' and other experts to help you spot all sorts of marine wildlife.

 

Yannick Cherrell was here last summer filming the work of the French scientists from APECS and Manx Basking Shark Watch. He has been here again for the last few days, filming grey seals and grey seals. He has been completely successful and has some very nice footage. Here are some photographs of Yannick filming the seals in the Sound this morning. The photographs were taken by Tom Keggan, his support diver.

 

 On July 27th we were out in the Manx Basking Shark Watch boat 'Happy Jack'  off Contrary Head when we met Craig Whally in his kayak. Shortly after we left him he found a sunfish (Mola mola). He did radio us to tell us about it but unfortunately we didn't hear him so we missed the treat of the year.

 Here is a BBC news item about Craig's find. I believe that  Ian and Jane Young have some great photos too, maybe they will allow us to add them to this news story.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/isleofman/hi/people_and_places/nature/newsid_8868000/8868625.stm

Government License 2010: Manx Basking Shark Watch is very pleased to have been granted a DEFA government license to continue its study of basking sharks in 2010. We have several strands to our research, establishing individual identities, studying basking shark courtship and tagging sharks to find more about their local and international movements.

Individual Basking Shark IDs: We are trying to establish how many basking sharks individuals visit the Isle of Man, how long they stay and whether they come back year after year. This will take several years of collecting individual shark identity profiles consisting of fin photos, length, sex and DNA analysis. We collect left and right dorsal fin photos. Each fin is like a fingerprint, with a set of nicks, tears and marks. These help us to re-identify the shark when we see it again. This is working really well, we have already identified several sharks that have returned year after year. Eleanor Stone, the Marine Officer for the Manx Wildlife Trust, is an expert in fin identification. She processes the hundreds of photographs obtained from each day's work on the MBSW boat HAPPY JACK and is putting together a catalogue of sharks that visit Manx waters. We also find out what sex each shark is by looking with a pole camera. The shark's size is estimated relative to the boat and a DNA 'swab' is taken from the sharks fin. This does not hurt the shark in any way. It is very similar to a human having a swab from the inside of the mouth. Genetics experts Dr Les Noble from Aberdeen University is Scotland and Prof Shivji from America will be studying the DNA. We hope to find out many new things from this study.

Studying Basking Shark Courtship: We are meant to be filming basking sharks during social swimming to find out if this is courtship or just communal feeding. This year we have not yet had any such behaviour to study. 

Tagging: We have 2 satellite tags to deploy this year. We are very grateful that these were sponsored by Tower Insurance from Douglas and by Drummond Enterprises from Canada. Our plan is to deploy them on very big sexually mature sharks such as the female that went across the Atlantic in 2007 (Gore et al 2008). If we do not get the opportunity to tag large sharks we may deploy them right at the end of the season. 

There is also the possibility of working with scientists from Ireland who will be deploying a different kind of tag but this is not yet licensed. 

Download Government Press Release about this license here. 

To see the BBC article about this see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10498528 

 

See the following link to read about the filming on 20th and 21st July.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/isleofman/hi/people_and_places/nature/newsid_8845000/8845946.stm

 

If you enjoyed meeting the 'Creatures from the Sea' over Marine Weekend, you now have more chances to see them! The Manx Wildlife Trust, in association with the Port St Mary Regeneration Committee will have a small touch tank display at Paddy's Continental Market, the Quayside, Port St Mary from 10am till 2pm, every Saturday till the end of August. As well as getting to see some weird and wonderful animals, children can also enter our fabulous drawing competition, to be drawn at the end of the summer. Prizes include Manx Inspirations goody bags, rockpooling trips and the grand prize of a wildlife watching trip on board Endeavour IWP, courtesy of Discover Diving.

A film team from BBC Oceans will be filming basking sharks and the scientific work of our team over the next few days. This is very exciting as it allows us to show the wider world how amazing Manx marine life is.

The boats involved will be Happy Jack and the dive boat Endeavor. Both the scientists and the film crew have very strict licenses issued by DEFA. These allow them to approach the basking sharks very cautiously whereas  the general public are not allowed to do this, they have to wait for the sharks to approach them.

Please give us plenty of room to operate and please ring 07624 334203 if you see any shark as they have been a bit sparse recently! 

Keen basking sharks spotters will have noticed that there were NO basking shark sightings between June 30th and July 9th. Mal Kelly finally spotted two sharks feeding in very rough water near Peel Hill yesterday.

You might think that this is very strange given that it is meant to be the very best time to see basking sharks off the Manx coast. The lack of sharks feeding on the surface is very probably due to the very windy weather, leading to rough, unstratified seas. Basking sharks are most commonly seen feeding on the surface on a calm, warm, sunny day when we have had calm seas for a few days beforehand. This is because the sea water warms up on top under those weather conditions, encouraging the plankton that the sharks eat to stay on the surface. We have, of course, not had much of that weather recently. Let us hope that they return soon.

 

Malcolm Kelly, who runs the shark boat 'Foillan Beg' out of Peel named this badly scarred shark Nick because of the large nick on the trailing edge of its dorsal fin. During the course of Manx Basking Shark Watch research on the 26th June we discovered that 'Nick' is in fact Nicki! We took a full set of identifying fin photos as well as establishing her sex with a pole camera and taking a very small swab of skin slime for DNA analysis. This work is done under license from DEFA.

 

We are delighted to announce that an MK10 PAT satellite tag that was put on a large male basking shark nick-named TONY has been found on St Medans Beach, Dumfries and Galloway. 

 Iona, aged 10, and her father Sid, found  the tag. Iona's mother, Caroline then embarked on an internet hunt for the owner of the tag. There is a phone number on the tag but it had rubbed off. This is hardly surprising given that the tag was on a large shark for 76 days and rolling around in the sea and on a beach for another nine months! Well done and thankyou for finding us!

 We will be able to send the tag back to Wildlife Computers in America. We hope that they will be able to  download the full data set telling us where Tony went, to what depths and to what temperatures. it is possible to get a lot more information from the actual tag that when the tag sends data via a satellite so this is very good news. We might be able to use the tag again if it is not damaged but we are not TOO optimistic about this as it has been in the sea for so long.

Here is a photograph of Iona holding the tag. It certainly looks in very good condition. Very well done and thankyou! 

 

These are pictures of Tony's dorsal fin, left and right side, taken just before he was tagged. We use fin photographs to identify sharks, a bit like the police use fingerprints. The fin photos were taken by Eric Stephan and Yannick Stephan from the French APECS team who were working with us last season.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This year the Shark Trust have set up a 'Basking Shark Blog' on their website, with updates from three of the main hotspots from around Britain - Cornwall, the Hebrides and the Isle of Man. We will be sending in the details for the Manx section of this blog, which will hopefully reach a wide audience of people interested in sharks and help put the Isle of Man firmly on the map. Check out the blogs at  http://www.sharktrust.org/content.asp?did=35614 for weekly updates from all three places.

The map below shows the distribution of sightings from May. They are quite well distributed off the west coast, with one more unusual sighting 10 miles off the east coast. We have also had quite a lot of sightings from boats, who have seen the sharks a bit further offshore. 

 

Link to the YouTube URL below to see excellent video presentation from Dr Simon Berrow explaining his basking shark slime sampling technique. Manx Basking Shark Watch will be using the same technique this summer. We plan to obtain at least 50 samples using this gentle, non-invasive technique. Well done Simon for discovering it! The intention is that several groups of scientists will send DNA samples to be analysed to find out more about basking sharks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrdbgWCJ4f4&feature=PlayList&p=850EF73988550102&playnext_from=PL&playnext=1&index=2 

One of the main focusses of our research at the Manx Basking Shark Watch, is photo identification. Some sharks have extremely distinctive dorsal fins which can be recognised year on year, or in different locations - like the Irish shark in the News item below. 

A shark that we photographed last year has already turned up this year! It is a shark with a very damaged dorsal fin, that flops over when out of the water. The underwater image below gives you a better idea of what it really looks like. The two above water images were taken last year and this year. We don't know where or when this damage occurred.

  In 2009

 In 2010

The Irish Basking Shark Project is tagging basking sharks with plastic coloured, numbered tags. They have tagged 109 so far. Please see their website (in blue below) to learn more.

 They have sent us these pictures of a the left and right sides of the dorsal fin of a basking shark with a distinctive dorsal fin, white tag No:513. Please keep an eye out for it or any sharks with white or yellow tags as these have probably come from Ireland. Please let us know if you see any sharks with these tags and we will let the Irish scientists know.

 

 

www.baskingshark.ie

Due to the sea fog, the planned watches this weekend may or may not be going ahead. If the mists lift (probably by the afternoon if today is anything to go by) then they will go ahead as organised.

Dr Greg Skomal, a shark scientist who visited the Isle of Man last summer, has had great success with his basking shark tagging project in America. His team tagged 35 basking sharks and some of them overwintered in deep water in the Caribbean. See the scientific paper in full at Skomal et al (2009)

This finding is particularly interesting if looked at in combination with our Manx shark, "Tracy the Tower Insurance Shark" an 8m long female who was tagged in Manx waters and travelled to Canadian waters, crossing the Atlantic in the process (Gore et al 2008).    It has long been suspected that basking sharks are world-wide travelers because their DNA markers are very similar.

The BBC Isle of Man have interviewed Florian Guthknecht about his film "Basking Sharks: Gentle Giants". This documentary about the Isle of Man and its wildlife was filmed on the Island last summer.

Paste the URL http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/isle_of_man/8687161.stm into your web browser to see the article.

    We would like to invite people to join us this weekend doing land based watches for marine mammals and basking sharks. The calm weather over the next few days will provide perfect conditions for seeing these amazing animals. Our watching schedule will be as follows:

The calm of yesterday afternoon (14th May) produced the first confirmed basking shark sightings of the 2010 season. The volunteer land watching team - now nicknamed 'The Dolphineers' - were out around the coast and saw one shark down at the Sound. Tom Felce, of Manx Whale & Dolphin Watch, along with the Dolphineers, spotted two more up at Niarbyl in the late afternoon, ironically whilst doing an interview about whales & dolphins for Manx Radio.

So if you're near the coast over the weekend, keep an eye out to see and you may be lucky enough to spot one of these fantastic sharks for yourself... 

Paste the URL  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/isle_of_man/8687161.stm into your web page to see the BBC news article about this!

Well, it's that time! The middle of May and we should be expecting the first basking shark sighting any day now. They are late this year but this is because the water is still cold and their food is not here yet.

You may have noticed that the water has been quite green with the microscopic plant plankton known as phytoplankton. The water is still only 9.5 - 10 degrees C and we really need this to hit 11 degrees C before the shrimpy zooplankton move in to eat the phytoplankton. The zooplankton is what the basking sharks eat so the arrival of the zooplankton normally equals the arrival of the basking sharks. 

Even though the water is still cold there have been unconfirmed rumours of a basking shark sighting between Laxey and Ramsey so maybe they will arrive soon. Scientists in southern Ireland report many basking sharks off their coast.

 Please report your sightings and put your photos on the website, everyone really appreciates seeing them.

As we head towards May, our thoughts are once again on the approaching Basking Shark season. Last year kicked off with a bang, with over 200 sightings in May and a record 877 sightings in total!

We are hoping that 2010 will be just as successful and busy. We are planning to put a couple more satellite tags on this year (watch this space for an update of where last year's sharks went...) as well as doing some transect surveys, photo ID and genetic sampling. Off the water, we have a group of volunteers who will be doing land based watches - again keep an eye on this website for details of where and when.

Of course we still need all your shark sightings so please do keep the reports coming. It's always really useful to know which areas are the hotspots at that time.

If anyone is able to help us check the website and sightings we would be very grateful. This would only involve a small amount of your time, one day a week, and gives you the chance to check out the sightings before anyone else! For any students looking to get more involved with Marine Biology it's a good starter as well. If you can help, please get in touch with Eleanor on 801985 or at eleanor@manxwt.org.uk.

Click on the link below for the 2009 MBSW report. This gives a summary of the results from all your sightings in 2009 as well as a bit about some of the other work MBSW has been up to.

Download 2009 report

2010 is hoping to be another successful year for MBSW. As well as collecting the public sightings, we are planning to continue boat surveys for photo identification and other scientific research. 

The Manx Wildlife Trust is also starting a land based project during the summer of 2010, carrying out dedicated watches at specific sights. These will record not only basking sharks, but whales, dolphins, porpoises and seabirds as well. Hopefully this will give us a better indication of where and when the best places to watch wildlife really are. If you would like to help with this project and hopefully see a lot of wonderful marine wildlife then just get in touch with Eleanor at eleanor@manxwt.org.uk for more details - the more eyes we have the better!

Happy Shark Watching for 2010!

It would seem that the message about basking sharks being a protected species is just not getting across to some people. Here is a juvenile or baby basking shark displayed in a Spanish supermarket in Santander a few days ago. A concerned member of the public took this sad photograph and notified the authorities. We await the response of the Spanish fisheries department.

In the meantime the Shark Alliance have issued this press release-

Baby Basking Shark in Spanish Fish Market Despite Protection
Shark Alliance denounces illegal take of endangered, gentle giants

Barcelona: 16.12.09: The Shark Alliance is condemning the continued illegal take of basking sharks in Spain, evidenced this week by the display of a juvenile of the species at a supermarket fish counter in Santander.  The harmless, plankton-feeding basking shark, the world’s second largest fish, is classified by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as Endangered in the Northeast Atlantic.  It has been illegal for EU vessels to fish, retain or land basking sharks since 2006, yet authorities in Spain, the EU’s top shark fishing nation, are failing to enforce the regulation.
  
“The number of shark species protected in the EU is growing with good reason.  Recovery of threatened shark species depends on tough enforcement of these rules as well as prevention of future violations through education,” said Àlex Bartolí, Shark Alliance Policy Coordinator for Spain.  “In particular, all incentive to kill basking sharks, including profit or publicity, must be removed.  It is high time that Spain, a global force in fishing for sharks, took conservation of these valuable yet vulnerable animals seriously.”
 
In February 2009, the European Commission released its Shark Plan of Action which includes commitments to educate fishermen and the public about shark conservation measures.   In May 2009, two seven meter-long basking sharks were taken illegally from the waters off Valencia by one Spanish fishing vessel within the span of 24 hours.  
 

Mr. Bartolí is the author of the 2009 Submon publication, SPAIN: A driving force in shark fishing around the world, which details poor enforcement and lack of awareness of shark protections in his country. 

 

 

This is an update of this story as provided by Ali Hood, from the Shark Trust: it ends happily in as much as the shark was not sold and DNA samples were taken for scientific research.

 As you know from the earlier news article a 500kg, 14’ long basking shark was landed in Howth, Ireland, by the Celtic Venture.  It was bought by Doran’s Fish Shop in Howth, (reportedly for €400).  Sean Doran went to the Independent and got the following article published:

 

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/catch-of-the-day-500kg-monster-1914138.html

 

Ali Hood, from the Shark Trust (in England) contacted the Sea Fisheries Protection Agency (SFPA) about the article, which wrongly claimed that the shark could be sold in Ireland.  The skipper was issued with a written warning, and Sean Doran of Doran’s was issued with a verbal warning.  The shark was disposed of and it seems no part of it was sold.  Thanks to Declan Quigley and Paul Duane for sorting things out.

 

The official response from the Sea Fisheries Protection Agency was quite clear, basking sharks are protected and it is not permitted to sell by-catch of basking shark in EU waters. 

 

The SFPA article states "The SFPA wish to clarify that it is illegal for a Community fishing vessel to actively seek to catch basking shark or indeed to recover onboard and retain basking shark that may have become entangled in their nets.  Article 6 of Council Regulation (EC) No 43/2009 states: “It shall be prohibited for Community vessels to fish for, to retain on board, to tranship and to land the following species in all Community and non-Community waters: — Basking shark (Cetorhinus maximus),— White shark (Carcharodon carcharias)”

The basking shark has been a protected species since 2007.

The North-East Atlantic population of Basking Shark is assessed as “Endangered” under the International Union for Conservation of Nature ‘Red List’of endangered species. (www.iucn.org ).  

In 2003 it was listed in Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) (www.cites.org) which requires that to avoid any utilisation of the species which would be incompatible with its survival all trade in that species is to be closely controlled.   

If a basking shark is caught in fishing gear, all attempts must be made to release the shark unharmed, if possible. "

 

 

A very sad and sorry tale appeared in the Independent the other day. A basking shark that was caught as by-catch in Ireland was up for sale. The news article (highlighted below) prompted rapid action by the Sea Fisheries Protection Agency and the Shark Trust. This has produced an excellent result: we have just received word from Ali Hood, director of conservation at the Shark Trust, that the sale was prevented and appropriate action to educate both the skipper and the seller is underway. DNA samples are to be taken for scientific research.  http://www.independent.ie/national-news/catch-of-the-day-500kg-monster-1914138.html.

Bruce Berry reported a basking shark sighting today (18th October 2009). This is a remarkable sighting for two reasons. Firstly, it is very late in the year. The basking sharks seen off the Isle of Man are normally pretty well gone by mid-August. This year has been VERY different, with sightings seen until late September and now this one well into October. Secondly it was seen underwater and only underwater. Most of our sightings reports come from surface sightings.

This shark swam past a group of divers, Bruce, Jon, Alex, Jim and Zoltan. They first saw it as they were starting their ascent and then they saw it again, going underneath them as they were doing their 3 minute safety stop after a dive on the wreck of the Citrine. The Citrine is a shipwreck close to shore off Bradda Head. During the season it is a basking shark hotspot.

A big thankyou to Bruce for reporting this sighting. 

We are delighted to report that Tony the 8m long male basking shark has dropped his tag after wearing it for 76 days. The tag is currently drifting in the middle of the Irish Sea, transmitting all its stored data to us via the Argos satellite system.

Tony the basking shark was named after our Chief Minister Tony Brown as he (the basking shark not the Chief Minister) was tagged off the isle of Man on Tynwald Day.

We look forward to looking at the complete story of where Tony has been during those 76 days, what his depth search profile was and what the water temperature was. The more we know about these enigmatic animals the more we can do to protect them. The Manx government's DAFF (Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) is very interested in local movements of basking sharks. They use tagging information and information from the Manx Basking Shark Watch public sighting scheme to help them with wildlife management decisions.

Until a few years ago it was thought that basking sharks sank to the bottom in the winter, shed their gill rakers and hibernated. As a result of satellite tagging work we now know that this is completely wrong. They move offshore and continue to feed. In 2007 one of our tagged Manx Basking Sharks, Tracy the Tower Insurance shark, went right across the Atlantic Ocean nearly to Novia Scotia in only 81 days so it is fascinating to see that both the Amie (another Tower Insurance sponsored shark) and Tony, both tagged in 2009, have stayed very close to the Isle of Man. The 4 sharks successfully tagged by us in 2008 also stayed within the Irish Sea. it would appear that it is only the odd, sexually mature individual who embarks upon cross-ocean journeys. We certainly need to keep tagging in combination with other research work to discover the wider picture of these wonderful beasties annual and long-term behaviours and movements.

On an economical note we are delighted that both the tags used on Amie and Tony were recycled.  We have, therefore, managed to fund both these tags from the generous funding given to us by Tower Insurance this year. Recycled tags are much cheaper than buying new ones! We had managed to recover both these tags. Tony's tag was the one used by Dr Mauvis Gore and I in 2007. It was sponsored by Dennis Drummond of Canada. It was retrieved on a Scottish shore, Ardrossan. We got a lot of interesting material from it then, when it was on a basking shark called Dennis and so it is very rewarding to get yet more data from it when it was on Tony. Who knows, we might get it back again if it finally drifts to shore! Amie's tag was one which had a malfunction upon deployment in 2008. Graham and I were very lucky and after an intensive search we recovered it from a beach near Rue Point on the North of the isle of Man. It's pin had broken. Wildlife Computers mended it and we were able to use it successfully in 2009. 

Anyway, we look forward to seeing the full data sets from Amie and Tony's tags. 

 

 

Florian Guthknecht is a film director. He and his team came to the Isle of Man at the beginning of June 2009 to film the basking sharks for “Bayerisches Fernsehen”, a non-commercial public-service television channel in Germany. Its function is of an educational nature. They are making a full -length documentary about the Isle of Man. This will be out sometime this winter. In the meantime they showed a small piece on German TV last week. This links to a clip-

Link to this URL to get the latest Marine Protected Area news.

 http://depts.washington.edu/mpanews/ 

Good question! We don't know. I have spoken to many people who have basking - shark watched for more years than i have and they all say that it is unusual. We have yet another report of a group of 7 sharks off Ballaugh today. Maybe when we have been collecting basking shark data for another decade will will know more!

Well, it's that time of year again. We need YOUR help to find a satellite tag full of very important information about a basking sharks movements.

Amie the Tower insurance shark, a 7m long female basking shark we tagged with a £3,500 satellite tag in July, has shed her tag after wearing it for 53 days. The tag is approaching Kicoole Beach in County Wicklow, Ireland. The map below shows its anticipated landing point, about 2km south of Greystones. Maybe, if you are going for a walk that way you would be kind enough to look out for it. The reward for returning it to us is £200.

We already have the essential details of where she has been, how deep she dived and what the water temperature was. This was transmitted to a satellite and then to us. However, if we get the tag back we can examine the full data set down to the minute. This would be excellent. If the tag is not damaged we might also be able to re-use the tag in 2010. This saves money and recycling always makes sense!

 

Here is a picture of what the tag looks like. If you find it please contact us via this website.

 

 

 

 

 

Manx Basking Shark Watch and APECS (Association Pour l'Etude et la Conservation des Sélaciens) have worked together this summer, tagging 8 sharks in Manx waters. The BBC did this article about it yesterday.  

This will not work as a direct link, you may have to copy and paste it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/8257036.stm

Paste this url into internet to be able to hear the excellent radio 4 from last week's program about the potential Marine Nature Reserve on the Isle of Man. It's a very well balanced program, with interviews from all the relevant people. Apparently the bit with Malcolm Kelly (Foillan Beg skipper from Peel) was chosen as the 'Pick of the week' on sunday.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/programmes/schedules/fm/2009/09/13

 

Here is a map of the basking shark sighting reports from July. There were 260 reports in July.

 

 

Here are the sightings from August! As you can see,  there were good numbers of sharks through August. There were 156 sightings reports in August. It is very interesting that we have so many sightings in August and that there are still sightings on the East coast.

Lottie Ray of Isle of Man newspapers has written this nice article summing up this years basking shark work. Thankyou Lottie!

 You have to copy this url and paste it into your computer.  Unfortunately it will not work automatically from this site.

http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/Isle-of-Man-witnesses-increase.5615463.jp