Spotted off Hayling Island!!!
Yes the annual summer great whitey story has hit the shelves, or internet which ever you prefer.
This year the Independent is claiming a great white is hunting off…Hayling Island!
Shark angler Graeme Pullen says he has been trying to catch the shark after sightings. The shark is “the big one,” he says “This is no basking shark, no porbeagle, blue or mako”… Oo er…
One fisherman has reported it was “huge, the biggest shark I have ever seen”.
Fishing partner Mr Comben said he is “not prone to imagination” and couldn’t see “what else it could have been other than a great white”.
Carve has repeatedly spoken to Richard Peirce, chairman of the Shark Trust, who has been hunting for large sharks for years and while the conditions in waters around the UK are suitable for great whites to be visitors, he has never come across one.
We have seen huge porbeagles around the coast, but not one story we have investigated has come up with a great white.
A great white could end up off UK shores though.. See the story of Lydia below
(Meanwhile Orcas are murdering great whites and eating their livers in SA… Read more here)
In 2014 Lydia a Great White of 4.4meters long weighing 2000lbs was 1,000 miles away from the UK and heading towards the British Isles. Tracked by the scientists at shark research organisation Oceach the shark had travelled more than 19,000 miles since she was tagged.
She hung around just above the North Atlantic ridge. If she swam over that then technically she would have been the first recorded great white to cross the Atlantic. But she turned around and headed back to the tropics. Well you would, wouldn’t you?
Although there has been much conjecture about great whites, who travel thousands of miles in their lifetime, appearing in British and Irish waters there has been no confirmed evidence. So Lydia provided scientists with invaluable data.
Dr Gregory Skomal, senior fisheries biologist with Massachusetts Marine Fisheries, told BBC News: “No white sharks have crossed from west to east or east to west.
“Although Lydia is closer to Europe than North America, she technically does not cross the Atlantic until she crosses the mid-Atlantic ridge, which she has yet to do.
“She would be the first documented white shark to cross into the eastern Atlantic.””
The shark first tagged in Jacksonville, Florida and named after the founder of Bradley University, has travelled 380 miles in the last 72 hours. IF she continued at that rate she COULD be in the water off Cork or Cornwall less than three days.
You can track Lydia and other sharks world-wide on the fantastic Ocearch tracker here www.ocearch.org/#SharkTracker
The Shark Trust post this release in response the claims…
