Great White Shark Spotted Of Uk Coast

[helterskelter]

found this on the Sun so called fottage of a great white!!!!1

what do u think? also their is a video.

http/www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2007340903,00.html

 

[WayneVT08]

I don't know, I'm thinking they were dolphins, not a Great White.

 

[Puffdaddy]

Nows the time for everybody to get out there fish named sharkbait and put 'em to use.

 

[CruX]

I don't know, I'm thinking they were dolphins, not a Great White.

The article says the shark was swimming amongst the dolphins.

He was videoing dolphins and only realised the killer shark was hunting among them when he watched the footage at home.

 

[-germ-]

I personally take anything in the red tops with more than a pich of salt....
Wheres the vid?
Couldn't find it....
( <---blame that )

 

[WayneVT08]

well i never really saw anything too peculiar about the video. it all looked normal to me, maybe there was a little excesive splashing, but who knows. Only those dolphins and the apparent great white.

 

[rdd1952]

Right at the very beginning it jumped and rolled slightly side ways. You could definitely see a dark back and white underbelly. Great whites have a very pronounced dark/white color pattern but dolphins do too. Dolphins usually only break the water in straight jumps and you don't see their under belly. I would definitely say it was a shark of some type.

Wheres the vid?
Couldn't find it....
( <---blame that )

It's just under the 3rd paragraph. Black/Red bar, not actually a photo to click.

 

[CruX]

I personally take anything in the red tops with more than a pich of salt....
Wheres the vid?
Couldn't find it....
( <---blame that )

I agree, but I heard it on one of the news channels yesterday so my interest was piqued. I reckon they were just promoting Jaws being on TV last night. If Jaws 3 comes back on Sky make sure you hit the information button for the pure comedy write up on it. It had me laughing for days.

Spoiler

Michael Cain stars and the info writer alludes to another Cain film 'The itallion Job' by a description along the lines of 'Michael Cain stars in the thriller sequal, 'you're only supposed to blow the bloody Jaws off!''

Well it made me chuckle anyway.

 

[The-Wolf]

the shark was most likely a bull shark Carcharhinus leucas
which is often confused with the white Carcharodon carcharias

bull sharks are very common off the UK coast

 

[CFC]

I've never heard of a bull shark in European waters, got anything to back that up? Porbeagle and blue sharks are the most commonly encountered larger predatory shark species off our coastline neither of which are documented man eaters, bull sharlks however are one of the most fearsome sharks in the sea and are well known for being maneaters!

However my girlfriend and i were unfortunate enough to have a close encounter with a fairly large shark off the Dorset coast in 2005. We had gone out snorkling in the bay early one morning to have a swim over the top of a rock reef about 60 meters off the shore before all the fish were pushed further out to sea by the noise of holiday makers on the beach. I have never been able to find a snorkle mask that doesnt leak so as usual was having to re adjust the mask and tip the water out of it when i spotted a black triangular shape sticking out of the water 30 or 40 meters away from us, at first it just didnt register and then all of a sudden it hit me what i was looking at, so i got the gf's attention and we both swam back to the shore, slow at first and then as fast as we could. Once we were on the beach we looked back and saw that the shark had come closer in and then watched for a good 15 minutes as it came within 15 meters of the shore swam along the shoreline for about 100 meters and then turned back out to sea. We didnt see much more than it was about 6 feet long and dark in colour with a long tail fin, after speaking to some of the local commercial fishermen and the people in the local baitshop they seemed to think it was most likely a thresher shark which are sometimes seen near fishing ports on the south coast during warmer times of the year as they follow the fishing boats in to feed on the scraps thrown over board. They also said that there are a good number of mako sharks caught in nets in the English channel every year but they rarely get reported because of the possible damage reports of 10 foot+ long sharks being around could do to the tourist trade which the sea side resorts rely on.

There is no reason for great whites to not be off our coast, they are warm blooded so the cold seas wont bother them as it would a tropical shark like the tiger shark and we have some fairly large seal populations on our northern and eastern shores, if they arent already here then it would seem the only reason they are not is because so far they havent wanted to.

 

[CruX]

We were on a small cruise off the west coast of Scotland about 15 years ago. It was a beautiful day and you could see for miles, there were bottle nose dolphins putting on a spectacle. We saw a massive fin break the surface then as quick as the dolphins appeared they were gone, a old guy who worked on the sea claimed it was a great white and told us to watch out, my dad laughed but I went back to the cabin to hide.

 

[The-Wolf]

I've never heard of a bull shark in European waters, got anything to back that up? Porbeagle

oops my bad.
I was thinking of the porbeagle but for some strange reason said bull.
apologies for the confusion.

 

[screamingdonkey]

There is no reason for great whites to not be off our coast, they are warm blooded so the cold seas wont bother them as it would a tropical shark like the tiger shark and we have some fairly large seal populations on our northern and eastern shores, if they arent already here then it would seem the only reason they are not is because so far they havent wanted to.

Although you say there are some fairly large seal populations around the UK, I've read elsewhere that scientists believe the seal colonies in the UK are not big enough to sustain a Great White population and this is the probable reason why they're not seen (or at least not on many occasions).

I agree with the point about the temperatures.
In the same report where I read about the UK seal populations, it refers to a year-round population of GW's in the Bay of Naples - where temperatures in the winter are around 11-13c.
The current UK sea temperature is around 16c, so from that perspective it's certainly possible

 

[CFC]

While our seal colonies are not large enough to support a year round resident population of great whites they are certainly large enough to gain the interest of any nomadic individuals on the look out for easy feeding grounds. Tagged great whites have been tracked traveling thousands of miles across open ocean to find feeding grounds and mates so why they apperently miss out the British coastline is a mystery.

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

Yes, apparently we've over-fished the great whites food sources so much over here that our waters wouldn't be able to sustain a permanent population of great whites;

http/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cornwall/5223142.stm

With the water currents changing, we're getting a lot of unusual visitors to our shores it seems now days. I don't see whats so imposible about having travelling great whites in our waters, afterall other countries keep on having unusual visitors turning up in their waters, like wasn't there that incredibly rare deep sea shark that was caught off japans waters not long ago?
Other weird stuff like how the number of basking sharks spotted in Scottish waters has risen steeply again is happening too;

http/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/4249528.stm


So anyway, even if this particular shark wasn't a great white, i still believe to a certain extent that they probably do visit our waters from time to time, whether intentionally or unintentionally.