Basking sharks off Ireland

There have been reports of unusually large numbers of basking sharks along the western seacoast of Ireland from Cork to Mayo, in particular off the Clare coast. It is thought that the clear weather and calm sea has drawn plankton to the upper layers of the ocean, enabling swimmers, boats and kayakers to see the sharks ingesting the plankton. Dr. Simon Berrow of the Irish Basking Shark Project urges everyone to respect social distancing of four metres from the sharks, “so as not to disrupt the sharks natural behaviour." Last weekend, environmental scientist Tom Gillespie filmed up to 20 basking feeding in a space of about a kilometer in a bay on the Clare coast.