It’s intriguing to read all of the comments on this thread and that other that
Eel Hunter started on the WorldSeaFishing forum -
http://www.worldseafishing.com/forums/s ... hp?t=67044.
Obviously there are numerous sightings of Basking Sharks off that coastline and the latest I could find, albeit down a bit, was off Sanycove in West Cork on 28th April. But to me the fascinating comment, and Eel Hunter and his son had a long sighting of that shark, was the shape of its dorsal.
The shape of the dorsal was straight on the front edge and very slightly concave on the back edge.
Now have a look at the pictures on the
http://www.baskingsharks.org/ web site. Um….all the shots of dorsal fins have that very distinctive curved leading edge. So what was it? Was it a large predatory shark? And if so what?
We’ve tried by a process of elimination on that WorldSeaFishing thread to eliminate species.
A Porbeagle has a very distinctive white spot by the trailing edge of its dorsal, and it didn’t have that. Also, as some of you have pointed out here, it would have been an enormous Porbeagle. Normally they just pack on pounds around their girth. And the ‘longest’ I can recall was one caught by an angler off Rock on the North Cornish coast in 1976. That at 465lbs – it held the World record for a number of years – was, from memory, a bit over 11’ long.
Colour-wise? Eel Hunter describes its back as being very dark grey. Colour’s probably the most difficult thing to make a judgement on. And, based on location, colours of the two species vary. However Great Whites are ‘normally’, on those ventral surfaces, greyish brown not unlike a Porbeagle, whereas Makos tend to be a brilliant blue/grey or even, usually in tropical waters, cobalt blue.
Teeth? Given where they were standing they really wouldn’t have got a good view of its teeth even though both species – the vast majority of sharks in fact - swim with their mouths slightly open. Although a Mako has very distinction ragged dog like teeth clearly visible those of a Great White, particularly those on the upper jaw, are large and triangular in shape.
Jumping? That’s more curious. Makos are the 'high jumpers' of the fish world. I've seen them, when hooked, clear the water by 20' - an impressive sight! They look just like somersaulting torpedoes. And, as far as I’m aware, But Great Whites have only been sighted jumping when they’re predating - based on location - on Seals or Sea Lions. But although Seals are present on that coast there’s no mention in a very detailed report, even though it was only 150 yards out, of a Seal or blood staining on the surface. Normally a Great White would attack and mortally wound before returning cautiously to feast on the remains.
So why did it jump? Was it as was implied the presence of the broken line? Or could it have been a case of misidentification – given the viewing angle the shape of the dorsal – and it was in fact a juvenile Basking Shark broaching.
I guess we’ve come full circle and I have to say, in this specific case, I really don’t know.
But Eel Hunter saw the fish and hopefully, faced with all our observations and speculation, is probably best able to identify what he saw. He’s seen enough Porbeagle and Basking Sharks to eliminate them. But was it a Mako or Great White? Wasn’t that the original question?
Enough of my witterings on that specific though. If I could just throw another couple of observations into the ‘melting pot’.
Great Whites in our waters?
I know it’s by now third hand but friends of mine that sportfished for Albacore of that coast were told by their skipper of two small ‘Great Whites’ caught in nets from the South West. They were in the 500lb range. But were they Great Whites?
Then - and this is going back a long, long way – once on what turned into a very uneventful day in the early 70s targeting Makos off Falmouth (Cornwall), by the famous Manacles Reef, we asked the skipper – Robin Vinnicombe – what was the largest shark he’d seen. Robin described, with a group of holiday makers on board, hooking a shark longer than his dingy – 14’ – with an eye ‘like a compass binnacle’. It came easily to the side, but Robin was concerned it hadn’t fought. So being alone, just with the holiday makers, he elected to poke it in the eye with the back of the flying gaff. It powered off and three hours later, not having once seen it again, it bite through the heavy trace.
I pressed Robin - who in the past had caught numbers of Porbeagles and some Makos – as to what it was. All he’d do was to shrug his shoulders. He didn’t know and wasn’t prepared to speculate. So what was that?
In addition there’ve been other unsubstantiated, but to my mind credible, reports.
Two, in recent years, came from North Cornwall. And, in one of those incidents, an experienced angling journalist I know described seeing what he is convinced was a Great White. In the second incident it was a commercial skipper who described seeing an apparent attack on a Seal and the aftermath, the carcass floating on the surface. He elected not to hang around.
The other I recall came from a marine biologist who was kayaking with his family off the Summer Isles off the West coast of Scotland. Although he only saw a fin, for a protracted length of time, he appeared to be in no doubt as to what he thought was a Great White. Then he reported in that documentary to finding the mutilated carcass of a Seal on the beach the next day. Why it wasn’t taken for forensic analysis though at that point wasn’t made clear.
If they are Great Whites where do they come from? I know MAC speculated that it could be South Africa. But there’re closer populations than that. How about, and the link would be the North Atlantic Drift, the North East USA. They’re regularly sighted off places like Cape Cod in Massachusetts and off Montauk, Long Island (New York). And of course remember ‘Jaws’? The skipper Quint in that was supposedly modelled on a legendary Montauk skipper Frank Mundus who’d caught Great Whites up to 4500lbs, 17.5 feet.
Then there’s a population in the Mediterranean. Those are occasionally encountered in the Adriatic off Croatia and Italy.
But how close have they actually been encountered to our waters? There certainly was a substantiated report of one from La Rochelle on the French Atlantic coast. They have also been harpooned off the Azores where they were presumably shadowing the migrations of whales. And, within the last two weeks, one of the skippers I’ve fished with has spotted several, up to an estimated 800 kilos (1760bs) off the Cape Verde Islands. So, not a ‘million miles’ to swim!
Dave
Oh blimey! There had to be a PS. Rockhopper mentioned the capture of that first Blue Marlin off the Algarve in August 1992. Ted Legg was skippering ‘Aquasition C’, but the angler was actually John Gill. Remembering that you’re not by any chance Mr Ivory’s mate are you?
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