Pádraig Hooley

or the local beach and there could be a dozen basking sharks there and if the plankton that they're feeding on just happens to be a little bit further down the water column you're swimming potentially in waters that are brimming with fish the size of you know coaches or buses and you're completely unaware of the fact and it's only when that new plankton rises to the surface.

Yeah, I mean we would regularly see animals now, bastion sharks, that are in the 20 to 25 foot range.

Occasionally you'd get animals that are 10 meters, so you're looking at 30 foot range.

And the old Hebridean shark fishermen would talk about having seen sharks that were up to 40 foot.

Now that's an animal that's the size of a whale.

Now we think some of those measurements heading towards 30 to 40 foot are probably

fishermen embellishments if you like but certainly up to 25 to 30 foot for an adult bastion shark is not that unusual and we are seeing many we're getting many of those images in suggesting animals that are comfortably within that range so they are just enormous fish now saturday week is whale watch ireland day isn't it 2026 what are people expected to do that day

Well, that's a free, it's part of Biodiversity Week, supported by our colleagues Inish, and it's a day of free guided land-based whale watches around the entire coastline of Ireland.

And that's an opportunity for member citizen scientists to join the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group up on headlands and vantage points.

And we'll take you through the field skills necessary to carry out a whale watch or to count basking sharks.

And we'll have optics on hand just to introduce people to the concept that, you know, you don't have to go out in a boat 20, 30 miles.

Sometimes you can just do a wonderful thing as simple as sitting on a clifftop with a pair of binoculars and watching some of the most amazing wildlife in Ireland.

And it's completely free and it's on your doorstep.

Yeah, it's all a matter of the more time you put in, the luckier you get.

Like if they're in the area, passing shots are really, really obvious.

You'll see that big dorsal fin and you've always got to remind yourself that sometimes people see a dorsal fin in the centre of the body and then they see a second fin behind

And they think that second fin behind is actually two sharks, but it's actually only one animal and it's only half the length of an animal.

So when you see that great big triangular dorsal fin and the smaller dorsal fin, you have to ask yourself how many metres between those two and then multiply that by two.

And that's the length of your animal.

And you'd be amazed how big some of these sharks actually are.