Animal · United Kingdom, Ireland, Norway
Basking shark
Cetorhinus maximus — the name this animal has in the language scientists everywhere share.
The basking shark is the second largest fish in the world, a grey giant that cruises slowly along the surface with its mouth wide open. Despite its size it is completely harmless and eats only tiny drifting animals.
Picture credit: Greg Skomal / NOAA Fisheries Service (Public domain) · Wikimedia Commons
Where does the basking shark live?
Home: Cool coastal waters and open seas of temperate oceans.
In the wild it lives in these countries: the United Kingdom, Ireland, Norway, the United States, Canada, Portugal, New Zealand.
Conservation status from the IUCN: endangered.
The short profile
Fully grown: usually 7 to 9 m long. It weighs about 4 700 kilograms. On the menu: tiny creatures it filters out of the water.
The story behind it
A basking shark swims forward like a living net: water pours into its mouth and streams out through its gills, where comb-shaped rakers hold back the plankton. In a single hour it strains more seawater than a large swimming pool holds. In summer the sharks gather where the plankton is thickest, and their tall fins slicing through the waves once made sailors think of sea monsters. They reach about ten metres, may live around fifty years, and a female carries her young for more than a year. That slow life is their weakness: whole populations were hunted for the oil in their huge liver and have never recovered, so the species counts as endangered and is protected in many countries.
Find it on the globe
Basking shark is there as a tiny animated figure that breathes and looks around. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.
It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.
Questions children ask
Is the basking shark dangerous?
No. Its mouth is a metre wide, but it has only tiny teeth and feeds on plankton. Divers can swim beside one without being bothered, though the huge tail is best given room.
What does a basking shark eat?
It eats plankton, the cloud of tiny animals and eggs drifting in the sea. It swims with its mouth open and sieves them out through its gills, taking in an enormous amount of water every hour.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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