DONEGAL (NORTHERN IRELAND)- A five meter basking shark which swims off the Donegal coast of Northern Ireland in summer has been tracked over 3000 miles south off the western coast.
It is the first time it has been confirmed where the sharks travel to for the northern hemisphere winter.
The shark spends its summers in the waters in Lough Foyle and near Malin Head, Northern Ireland. It was discovered near Senegal, over 3,000 miles away.
The research was carried out by the Irish Basking Shark Project, whose coordinator, Emmett Johnston, explained to the BBC why the shark had travelled so far. “They head further south to where the food is, like the larger whales from this area.”
Up until now there have been lots of different theories put forward about the sharks and one was that they hibernated over the winter because there wasn’t enough food in the waters around the north Atlantic. Other people said they went offshore.
Still it remains a question where the basking sharks feed on in tropical waters. In temperate waters they live on a type of plankton, insects that are in the sea, but that is not found down there in the tropical waters. “It is a very different kind of habitat, it is akin to finding a polar bear in the desert”, said Johnston.