FIT THE FIRST*
"We have sailed many months, we have sailed many weeks,
(Four weeks to the month you may mark),
But never as yet ('tis your Captain who speaks)
Have we caught the least glimpse of a Snark!"
(From: 'The Hunting of the Snark' by Lewis Carroll)
Where to begin? Perhaps in the words of 'The Sound of Music':
'Let's start at the very beginning, A very good place to start...'
I have never seen a Basking Shark.
I realise I'm not alone in that gap in my experience. After all, the Basking Shark, although the second largest fish and shark species on the planet (after the Whale Shark), is a sea-living giant, often spending winter months offshore or in deeper waters. Even when it comes closer to Britain and Ireland's coasts in summer time, it is usually off less populated parts of our west coasts. But it does sometimes come REALLY close inshore. With a typical adult basking shark reaching 7.9 metres in length (that's 26 feet in old money - longer than four six-foot-tall fridges laid end-to-end!) and the largest being over 12 metres, plus a stonking great big dorsal fin sticking up out of its back, people do often see them as they cruise slowly around, feeding at the surface of the sea. Top spotting locations around the British coast are Devon and Cornwall, around the Isle of Man and up and down the west coast of Scotland, particularly around the Inner Hebrides. But I've never seen one.
A bit of background basking shark biology follows: Basking sharks (given the scientific name Cetorhinus maximus) are found all around the world, generally in the temperate oceans. They, like Whale Sharks and only one other species of shark (the Megamouth Shark), are filter feeders that eat zooplankton, other invertebrates and very small fish. They cruise slowly through denser patches of plankton with their huge mouth open, forcing seawater out through their gills and trapping their tiny prey on specialised structures on their gills, before swallowing them. Their name comes from their habit of swimming slowly at the sea's surface, feeding as they go, thus looking like they are basking in the sun. Of the many other names basking sharks have been given, the commonly used name ‘sun-fish’ also reflects this habit of surface feeding in sunny, calm weather.
Basking shark filter-feeding near the surface (Photo via <a href="https://www.goodfreephotos.com/">Good Free Photos</a>)
Basking sharks have a giant liver, running the length of their body, weighing up to 25% of body weight and packed with rich fish oil. For an average adult basking shark, weighing about 4 and a half tons, that makes for a liver weighing over one ton! This huge weight and volume of oil in the body had led to their historical exploitation through harpoon-based (and other) fisheries, as well as for their skin, meat and fins. The oil was largely used for lighting lamps (not unlike the history of whaling for whale oil). The resultant historical killing has led to significant declines in the populations of these slow-growing, slow-maturing, long-lived, gentle, ocean giants.
Globally, the World Conservation Union, the IUCN, has listed the basking shark as an Endangered species since 2018. Basking sharks are still at risk globally because of the value of their fins to shark-fin fisheries (surely one of the most unsustainable catches of all time), for which they are directly targeted. Quoting a BBC article on basking sharks, they are 'also at risk of propeller damage from collision with boats and of entanglement in fishing gear, particularly the lines for static gear such as pots and creels for catching lobsters and crabs'. Concern over their status in Great Britain led to their legal protection under the Wildlife and Countryside Act (in 2000, although basking sharks were first named as a protected species on the Isle of Man under the Manx 1990 Wildlife Act).
Truly one of the most under-appreciated wonders of the seas around these Sceptr'd Isles.
The thing is, I've never seen one. So what? Well, the odds ought really to be skewed in my favour for incidental encounters, and not just on account of their enormous size. I am, by training, a marine biologist who grew up, studied, and have subsequently worked my whole career in Scotland; I've specialised in marine fish ecology; I've travelled extensively on Scotland's west coast and to its islands on the ferries of Caledonian MacBrayne, for work and pleasure; I've spent survey time on boats and on the coast up and down the west coast and on the Hebridean and northern islands; I even travelled right around the north, west and south coasts of Ireland one summer. Every chance I get, I will swim in the sea (for fun).
And I've never run across a basking shark. In fact, I keep missing them. Sometimes by minutes.
Earliest ‘encounter’
I think the first time I came across the basking shark was on television sometime in the 1970s, in the 1969 film 'Ring of Bright Water', starring Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna. 'Ring of Bright Water' is a story about a Londoner and his pet otter living on the Scottish coast. Although the story is fictional, it is is adapted from the 1960 autobiographical book of the same name by British naturalist and author Gavin Maxwell. In his attempt to find food for his ever-hungry otter, the hero harpoons a basking shark, cuts it up and freezes it (only to find that the otter won't touch it). In fact, this storyline echoes Maxwell's actual failed attempt of trying to establish a basking shark fishery based on the Isle of Soay (which he had purchased) near Skye between 1945 and 1948. The experience was described subsequently in his 1952 book: 'Harpoon At A Venture'.
In the film there is actual footage of a basking shark (apparently filmed in the Firth of Lorne), purportedly swimming under the hero's rowing boat.
Screenshot of basking shark from the film 'Ring of Bright Water'
He returns later and harpoons a basking shark, kills it and cuts it up on the beach, before transferring it to an old freezer that he has bought. As a real, dead basking shark was shown (see below) being cut up on the shore (following a close-up shot of a harpoon in a real basking shark), I can only assume it was harpooned and killed for the film company by one of the existing Scottish basking shark fishermen of the time. I remember the sense of unfairness I felt in my boyhood breast at the time about the shark being killed and its flesh wasted for nothing (although a fictional account, a real shark was clearly killed).
Cutting up the poor bloody shark in 'Ring of Bright Water'
(Screenshots from the film)
The tagging of the shark
I actually got my first potential professional involvement in basking sharks off to a nearly-flying start. In 1996, I was working for Scotland's statutory nature conservation agency, Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH), in the marine and coastal conservation section. On the departure of a colleague, I was asked to take over the role of SNH project manager for a proposed project that hadn't begun, namely a collaboration with two academics at Durham University, Drs Mark O'Connell and Tim Thom, to attempt tracking of basking sharks with satellite tags. SNH provided funding to purchase four satellite tags and the darts that would allow them to be attached to basking sharks, with the aim spending an experimental season finding out more about the behaviour and movements of the sharks around the Isle of Arran in the Firth of Clyde. As well as the tagging equipment, access was purchased, at an academic discount rate, to the Argos satellite run from Toulouse in France. My involvement, which commenced with a visit to Durham to meet Mark and Tim in early 1996, promptly ceased when I changed jobs and agencies in July 1996, moving on to the new Scottish Environment Protection Agency, and the project management role passed to one of my friends back in the SNH marine and coastal section. The subsequent field season around Arran in the summer of 1997 is well-described in detail in the lovely 2021 book: 'A Sea Monster's Tale: In search of the basking shark' by Colin Speedie.
Following on from pioneering Scottish basking shark tracking studies by Dr 'Monty' Priede from the Aberdeen Fisheries Laboratory some 14 years earlier, the Durham University/SNH collaboration was only the second attempt to track Scotland's basking sharks. Had I still be employed by SNH in 1997 and managing the contract, there is a great chance that I would have secured my first sightings of basking sharks then; the project used a network of volunteers (mostly Scottish Wildlife Trust members, and mostly based on headlands and promontories) to make 29 shark sightings that summer. The researchers made a total of five approaches by boat to attempt to tag basking sharks and, although there was success at attaching the tags to two sharks, there were problems with the equipment that meant that, ultimately little was learned about the behaviour of the sharks. Useful lessons were learned, though, about the process of approaching and tagging basking sharks.
I was pleased to discover that, many years later, Scottish Natural Heritage was involved in studies that generated much improved understanding of basking shark behaviour. Since 2012, SNH (now called Nature Scot) has been working with the University of Exeter to understand more about basking shark habitat use and behaviour using a variety of tagging technologies. A total of 61 satellite tags have been deployed on basking sharks, as part of the Nature Scot and University of Exeter partnership project to investigate their movements and results were published in Nature Scot's 2016 Research Report, as well as peer-reviewed scientific papers. Nature Scot was also involved in an international collaboration in 2019, using REMUS SharkCam - a sophisticated Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) designed, built and operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in the USA, which generated some amazing underwater film of basking sharks swimming near the Isles of Coll and Tiree. All of the SNH/Nature Scot basking shark work since 2012 is available here.
Near misses
I think the first time I actually realised that I'd missed a great opportunity to see basking sharks was when my wife and I took our old campervan on the CalMac ferry to the Inner Hebridean islands of Coll and Tiree. This is when I first realised that the waters around these islands in summer are a real hotspot for basking sharks. On our first day on Coll, we visited the Post Office and, while Olivia was in buying postcards and stamps, I chatted in the warm summer sun to the Post Mistress's husband. He told me, unprompted, that there had been 37 basking sharks swimming in the harbour bay the week before. Missed by a week or so. Needless to say, the further pleasant, sunny week we spent on Coll and Tiree, and two further ferry trips, resulted in no shark sightings.
The Isle of Coll Post Office
On another campervan trip, this time in the Outer Hebrides, when we travelled in two gloriously sunny, calm and warm weeks from Vatersay in the south, to Lewis in the north, we were on the Barra to Eriskay ferry, and decided to sit on the top deck, leaving our wee terrier Ella in the van down on the vehicle deck. About halfway across, I went down to check on the dog and missed a basking shark which had surfaced briefly and was spotted by my wife (who is also a marine biologist). This one, I missed by about a minute. I should have stayed where I was.
The damned dog was fine.
On a two week campervan holiday when we travelled around the Irish north-east, north, west and south coasts in high summer, no basking sharks were seen. On Achill Island, however, we took a trip out to the west end, to be informed at the beautiful bay at Keem, that there had been a basking shark swimming around the bay that morning.
But the most frustrating miss was surely on a campervan trip to northwest Scotland, when we were engaged on a seaweed survey for the plant charity, Plantlife Scotland. We were staying one evening in the campsite at the really beautiful Clachtoll Beach, and I donned my wetsuit and went for a late evening swim in the bay, with a beautiful sunset developing on the western horizon. After a great 20 minute swim, I went to the shower block and showered. As I came out of the shower block, a fellow camper approached me from the beach and said highly excitedly, in German-accented English: ‘Did you see the basking shark?’
Me: ???
‘Yes, it swam into the bay just now and swam around. It was wonderful. Amazing!’ It had appeared about five minutes after I got out and went for a shower. My fellow camper had been sitting on the promontory on the right of the above photo and had a great view of the shark. I’m very happy for him.
Clachtoll Bay, Sutherland, Highland Council ((c) Google Earth)
I used to jest that I thought basking sharks were just made up, a work of fiction. My failure to see them, a bit of a standing joke between my wife and me. But, with a fair wind, some sun and a bit of luck, I’m hopeful of a change in my fortunes on that front. My family have given me an amazing gift, in late August, of a three day visit on a boat based on the Isle of Coll, during peak basking shark season, to attempt the spotting of, and potentially swimming with, basking sharks. I’ll be joining a trip with Basking Shark Scotland (an eco-tourism business specialising in marine wildlife watching), and keeping everything crossed, with the aim of breaking my basking shark duck.
"Just the place for a Snark! I have said it twice:
That alone should encourage the crew.
Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice:
What I tell you three times is true."
(From: 'The Hunting of the Snark' by Lewis Carroll)
I will find out soon enough if the sea around the Isle of Coll is indeed 'just the place' for a Shark - you'll have to await Fit The Second to find out! There are no guarantees. The trip will be great whatever happens, but we may see basking sharks, we may not. It’s such a beautiful area, with stunning seascapes and beaches, and packed with marine and island wildlife that, whatever happens, it will be an amazing experience and a real privilege to be there. There might be sharks and there might not. Watch this space…
[*Fit The First: in case you are wondering about this unusual phrase, I was tickled to discover that Lewis Carroll had made use of an archaic literary phrase for verses or chapters, namely ‘Fits’, in his poem, ‘The Hunting of the Snark’. I first encountered this use of ‘Fit’ in Douglas Adams’ adaptation of his books, ‘The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’, for BBC radio. Each weekly episode was named as Fit The First, Fit The Second, etc. I’d always thought that this was just a conceit of his own but was delighted to learn, in reading around for this blog post, that he actually did it as a tribute to Carroll’s ‘The Hunting of the Snark’! I hope my Fit The Second, to follow my Coll trip, will not be in the nature of the agonies of The Hunting of the Snark!]
