Mark Guiry and Evan Shelly are drone pilots, photographers, and videographers, and they recently put 13 hours into capturing just a few seconds of footage that shows a basking shark breach. The footage is “extremely rare,” according to Guiry and Shelly.
“We were absolutely shocked, they wrote in an Instagram post to their business account, 528 Creative. “We spent 13 hours sitting at Loop Head in Clare watching and trying to capture this extremely rare behaviour, there is very very little footage of this behaviour online! It was an absolute privilege to watch and we were absolutely buzzing when we finally got the shot!”
[RELATED: ‘Sharktopus’ Video Shows Octopus Riding Shark—But Why?]
The Instagram video shows clips of basking sharks congregating off the coast of Ireland, clips of Guiry and Shelly as they waited for a breach from their vantage point on a cliff, and, of course, the moment of the breach itself. The pair says they applied for and received permission from the Irish Park and Wildlife Service to capture footage of the basking sharks.
Watch a rarely seen basking-shark breach here:
About Basking Sharks
Basking sharks are Earth’s second-largest fish species, next to whale sharks. They can be 40 feet long and weigh more than 5 tons. Although these large sharks are typically slow moving, often filmed with their gaping mouths open as they filter zooplankton from seawater, they can get moving quickly if they want to. And, yes, they breach.
One 2021 research study showed that basking sharks might breach as often as six times per day. In fact, researchers caught one individual basking shark breaching four times within 47 seconds. However, with that said, it’s rare for anyone to see this behavior, and it’s even rarer to catch it on camera or film.
Header stock image by George Karbus Photography/Getty Images