The basking shark is the world’s second largest fish, after the whale shark. Basking sharks are endangered, in part because boats strike them when the sharks come up to spend time near the surface. However, no one’s ever seen a boat strike on a basking shark from the shark’s point of view—until now.
In fact, it’s possible that no one’s ever seen video of a boat strike on any type of large marine animal from the animal’s point of view. At the time of the strike, this basking shark just happened to have a measurement device on it that can track the animal’s activity and record video.
Taylor Chapple, a shark researcher at Oregon State University’s Hatfield Marine Science Center and lead author of a study that explored the implications of this new data, told Phys.org: “This is the first ever direct observation of a ship strike on any marine megafauna that we’re aware of.”
Chapple says the boat struck the shark as it fed at the surface of the water. After the collision, the shark appears to panic. “It immediately swam to the seafloor into deeper, offshore waters, a stark contrast to its behavior prior to the strike,” Chapple explained.
The 23-foot-long female basking shark retreated to deep waters after the incident, where the tag continued to collect data about her movements and behavior until the tag self-released. Phys.org reports that these tags self-release after a pre-determined timeframe, so about seven hours after the collision, researchers lost track of the shark.
Watch the collision and aftermath here:
Did the Basking Shark Survive?
Unfortunately, researchers don’t know for sure if this basking shark survived its collision with a boat. Around the time of the tracking tag’s self-release, the shark was alive but hadn’t resumed “normal” behavior yet.
Hopefully, scientists can use the data from this first-ever footage to better understand how ship strikes affect marine megafauna and how to prevent future strikes.
Header image courtesy of Greg Skomal / NOAA Fisheries Service (Public Domain)