An up-close encounter with giant sharks in Ireland

Basking sharks are one of the world's largest and most elusive fish species. But off the Irish coast, these gentle giants swim so close to the shore you can nearly touch them.

Word quickly spreads along the coast of Ireland each year when the giants arrive. Despite visiting their breeding grounds in County Mayo for more than a decade, I had never seen one myself until I was standing at a dizzying height on a wind-whipped hill on Achill Island.

Shielding my eyes from the Sun's glare, I followed the clear blue water away from Keem Beach and saw two basking sharks lazily cruising just offshore beneath the sweeping cliffs. From the moment I spotted the behemoths swishing through the bay from a distance, I knew I had to see them up close.

Fast-forward a week later and I'm peering over the side of a boat as it putters to a stop. My knuckles grasp the railing, and I steady myself as I lean forward and prepare to come face to fin with one of the world's largest and most elusive sharks.

Each year from April to early July and then again in August and September, hundreds of endangered basking sharks come to Ireland's western and south-western coasts to feast on copepods and plankton blooms so large they can be seen by satellites. In fact, the area from Donegal Bay to County Cork is arguably the best place on Earth to see basking sharks, as these temperate-water titans swim so close to the shore in shallow-water bays that you can almost reach out and touch them.

According to Dr Chelsea Gray, a researcher with the Irish Basking Shark Group (ISBG), "basking sharks are global citizens". But while the animals live in cold waters from Scotland to New Zealand, she notes that "Ireland is really unique in that they come so close to shore", making it easy to spot them from both the land and sea. 

Basking sharks are the second-largest fish in the world and just one of three plankton-eating sharks. A closer relative of great whites than its fellow filter feeder, the whale shark, these slow-moving gentle giants can grow up to 10m (33ft). Their name comes from their propensity to swim along the ocean's surface to feed on zooplankton, making them appear to bask in the Sun's rays. As a result, the fish's local Gaelic name is liamhán gréine, or "sun fish".

Since Ireland's shallow coastal shelf attracts zooplankton especially close to its beaches, the island has become the place for travellers seeking a close encounter with the mammoth creatures.

Basking sharks are longtime visitors to Irish waters. During the 1950s and '60s, Achill Island served as the world's largest basking shark fishing and processing hub. Their one-tonne livers were harvested for oil and used for everything from cosmetics to commercial lubricants and as a medicinal treatment for healing wounds. Their fins were also highly sought after for shark fin soup.

Beyond Irish waters, Norwegian, Japanese, Canadian and other fishermen also hunted the massive fish extensively. As a result, basking sharks were nearly hunted to........

© BBC