Thursday, 30th July 2009
SHARK SIGHTING CLOSES GIB’S BEACHES
by Brian Reyes
The debate is on: was it a killer from the deep or a gentle giant that feeds on plankton? The sighting of a shark off Camp Bay this week has sparked a fevered debate as to whether it was a great white or a basking shark.
The first has a ferocious reputation. The second is a toothless, harmless mammoth.
The shark was filmed by a group of visiting divers from the beach and was seen swimming the length of coast from Camp Bay to Little Bay.
The Chronicle has obtained exclusive images from one of those divers, Burkhard Menn, who runs a diving business, Beedivers Gibraltar, and dives regularly off Camp Bay.
The grainy images show a large fin just a few metres from shore. That fin holds the key to the shark’s identity.
Mr Menn told the Chronicle that the images had been analysed by a marine biologist friend who concluded it was a basking shark.
“He saw the fin and straight away was absolutely sure that it was a basking shark,” he said.
Mr Menn also described how his group of divers reacted when they saw the fin.
“Everybody just wanted to get into the water,” he said. “Swimming with a shark like that is a fantastic experience.”
Not everybody thought so, however.
On Wednesday tourism officials erred on the side of caution and closed all Gibraltar’s beaches to swimmers, raising the red flag as a warning.
At sea, the Marine Section of the Royal Gibraltar Police kept a watchful eye out for the shark.
Back on shore, not everyone convinced that the shark was of the harmless variety.
Dr Erik Shaw, head of the marine section of the Gibraltar Ornithological and Natural History Society, viewed different footage filmed by another diver.
“The video footage was clear and in high definition, and showed the dorsal and tail fins of what I believe to be a great white,” he said.
The video footage suggested a large shark, with a two metre spread between the dorsal and the tail fin. Overall, it could have been as long as 10m.
Both basking sharks and great whites are relatively common in the Strait of Gibraltar and the Mediterranean, though rarely seen so close to shore.
Some experts believe that the Mediterranean is a nursery where great white sharks give birth and raise their young.
CORRECTION:
Our print edition on Thursday cited Dr Eric Shaw of the GONHS as saying the shark was 2m in length. This was an error. In fact, based on video footage it was estimated that there was two metres between its dorsal and tail fins. That would have made the shark anywhere between eight and 10m long.