Big Shark Intimidates Puget Sound Boaters But 25-Foot Basking Shark Was Only Looking For Plankton
Marc Malloy was fishing for salmon in a 10-foot canoe Sept. 28 when he saw a fin emerging from the water.
At first, Malloy thought the creature might be a seal. Then it got bigger and bigger.
“I turned around, and there was this dorsal fin and tail fin sticking out of the water, and I thought, ‘Oh my God. It’s a shark,”’ the 25-year-old coffee salesman said.
He froze as the 25-foot beast glided by, then snatched up his anchor and paddled furiously for shore 15 yards away on Hartstene Island near Shelton.
From land, he and other boaters watched the shark move slowly through shallow water, apparently feeding.
“I was utterly terrified,” Malloy said. “My heart just about jumped out of my body.”
What Malloy saw was a basking shark, which feeds only on plankton, said John Rupp, curator of fishes at the Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium and one of the few biologists who track the creature.
“They’re completely harmless,” he said.
The creature is named for its propensity to surface in sunny weather.
It was the second sighting of a basking shark in Puget Sound this year, said Rupp and Jim Darling, collaborators in the Clayoquot Sound Biosphere Project on the west coast of Vancouver Island.
“It’s very exciting that one was seen down there,” Darling said. “In the last few years, the sightings have been few and far between.”
Reaching more than 30 feet in length, basking sharks are the world’s second-largest fish. The whale shark, which can be 50 feet, is the largest.
“It’s almost astounding how little we know about something that large that lives in our waters,” Darling said.
There have been no confirmed sightings of live, baby basking sharks.
No one knows where the species breeds, how many exist or how far they migrate.
Some experts believe they spend part of the year hibernating on the ocean floor.
Others think they constantly prowl the world’s seas in search of plankton-rich waters.
Rupp recently established a regional sighting network for basking sharks, maps confirmed observations and plans to pool his data with scientists around the world.
If they can get enough money, Rupp and Darling hope to attach satellite transmitters to some of the creatures to track their movements.
Sometimes, the big sharks jump out of the water like salmon, Darling said.
In the United Kingdom, basking sharks are as beloved as Puget Sound’s killer whales, and tour boats offering shark-watching trips.
This year, for the first time, all commercial and recreational fishing of basking sharks was banned in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico, said Michael Bailey, a National Marine Fisheries Service manager in Maryland.
The move was aimed to prevent a population crash of the species, which takes years to mature and probably has few offspring, Bailey said.
Some environmentalists also want federal protection expanded to the West Coast, said Sonja Fordham of the Center for Marine Conservation in Washington, D.C.
There are some indications that basking sharks are on the decline in the Pacific Northwest and off California, Darling said.
When he first began tracking the big fish in Clayoquot Sound in 1990, about 30 individual animals surfaced every morning and evening.
Since then, the sightings have dwindled.
“You can spend weeks and not see a single shark,” Darling said.
He said it was unclear whether the sharks are in trouble or experiencing a normal, cyclical decline.
“We have so little solid information about what’s going on,” Darling said.
“That’s why every sighting is valuable.”
xxxx SHARK FACTS Reaching more than 30 feet in length, basking sharks are the world’s second-largest fish. The whale shark, which can be 50 feet, is the largest.