Whale Track Stories: Hannah's basking shark highlights
Hannah Mcvicar, a member of the Whale Track community who reports what sea creatures she’s spotted, shares some memorable sightings from this season, including an unexpected encounter with 8 basking sharks!
I am an undergraduate student at UHI with the Scottish Association for Marine Science, studying Marine Science with Marine Biology. Through the university, I joined the wonderful Seatrek team on the west coast of Lewis as a wildlife boat guide. This was a dream job for someone like me who is a wildlife enthusiast, made even more special by its location in the wild Outer Hebrides, where I had never been before. Working with Seatrek over the past two summers, I have experienced some incredible animal encounters including seeing orca, minke whales and ocean sunfish. This summer however, the show was stolen by multiple sightings of the second largest fish in the world- the basking shark.
I think many people don’t know about the nature and size of basking sharks as they can be quite elusive in our waters. These gentle creatures can grow up to twelve metres in length and feed on the zooplankton floating in the water. When swimming at the surface, the large triangular dorsal fin of the shark protrudes out the water and, often so does the tip of the tail, which is sometimes mistaken for a second shark.
According to the locals on Lewis, sightings were a lot more common ten or so years ago but since then Seatrek hasn’t reported many sightings on the west coast. Logging sightings in the HWDT Whale Track helps record patterns like this and is also a good tool for anyone wanting to track what species have been seen recently in their area. I recorded a number of sightings of basking sharks on the Whale Track app this summer but there is one trip that has stuck in my mind.
On 21 July, on an afternoon trip around the local Uig coastline, our passengers and crew suddenly found ourselves surrounded by a minimum of eight basking sharks, however I think the number was probably closer to eleven! At first, the skipper and I were in complete shock as we had only just started seeing them that summer and not yet in such big numbers. We switched off our engine and drifted to avoid startling the sharks. As a result, they swam all around us and continuously came very close alongside the Rib. I think it was very emotional for everyone on the boat to observe these beautiful creatures in their natural habitat. As luck would have it, this was not the only group shark sighting of the summer with many more spotted in the following weeks on our Seatrek trips, and also on one surreal evening kayak I had. Having never seen a basking shark until this past summer, I feel exceptionally lucky to have experienced what I have experienced and know it is something I will never forget.