Shark encounter

A few days ago, I posted this about tracking sharks off the West Coast of the Isle of Man.

Well, last night, some people popped out in kayaks to… well, to have a kayak, I guess and they saw a shark close up.
Like – really close up:

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More amazing photos via that link.

Remember that this is a Basking shark (Cetorhinus maximus) – a completely harmless* plankton eater, so these guys are completely safe. Not like if you were out surfing in False Bay and you saw a fin that close. Briefly.

* unless you’re a plankton.

Track A Shark

Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, plus a little bit of cash from those hard working sponsors, you’re now able to track basking sharks off the coast of the Isle of Man. They’ve tagged 4 sharks and they are following them around (electronically) because:

This scientific data is useful to government to enable them to make informed wildlife management decisions.

I’ve been following Mister Tailor for a few days now:

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He’s:

a 5.5m male, named for his unusually shaped tail fin that slopes gently backwards rather than standing tall like most caudal fin tips.

So there you go.

Basking sharks are huge, much bigger than your average Great White, but as plankton eaters, they are completely harmless to humans.
My personal hope is that Mister Tailor’s wanderings unwittingly draw a diagram of the circuitry and mathematics required to design and build a time machine. But I suppose that’s quite unlikely.

Elsewhere on the wildlifetracking.org site, you can follow birds, bees (ok, not bees) and other animals all around the world.
(Hint: The geese are especially cool.)