People on a wildlife trip in Cardigan Bay in west Wales were treated to a rare sight as a 9ft shark jumped from the ocean just yards away from their boat. The extraordinary footage was captured on Monday evening off Pen-yr-Afr, between Cardigan and Moylgrove in Pembrokeshire.
In the video, the thresher shark can be seen jumping high from the water right next to the group before it emerges again from the sea a few seconds later as the boat is moving away, much to the delight of those onboard. You can get the latest WalesOnline newsletters e-mailed to you directly for free by signing up here.
The sighting was filmed by Tony Barber, owner of A Bay to Remember, a company which provides dolphin and wildlife trips in and around Cardigan. He runs the company alongside his wife, and said this is only the third occasion that they have seen a thresher shark in all their time as a business, and the first time they’ve been able to catch one on camera.
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“It’s pretty unusual to see one like that,” said Tony. “We see dolphins regularly, and you might see a splash now and again but without really knowing what it is. We've only ever seen sharks in the distance, but this time it was clear as it was right there. I would say it was about three metres long, about eight or nine feet. This is only our third time seeing one in 16 years of running the boat trips and the first to be caught on camera. What an amazing creature.”
According to The Wildlife Trusts, the thresher shark is a migratory species that passes through UK waters during the summer. They can grow up to six metres in length and weigh up to a whopping 340kg. They can live for up to 50 years and are classed as vulnerable according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. They are considered harmless to humans and not aggressive.
A spokesperson for The Wildlife Trusts said: “The thresher shark spends most of its time in the deep waters of the open sea, rarely straying into coastal areas. To survive in these colder waters, they have evolved to be endothermic. This means that they can keep their body temperature higher than the temperature of the surrounding water.
"They do this through a specialised heat exchange system, which allows them to conserve heat produced through internal body mechanisms such as metabolism or muscle shivering. Thresher sharks use their extremely long tail to hunt. They herd smaller fish into tight shoals, swim at them and thrash their tail like a whip, stunning some of the fish and making them easy to catch.”
The impressive sighting is the second shark encounter captured on film in west Wales in the past few days. Last week, two friends out on a boat in Tenby witnessed a large basking shark swimming very close to the town’s North Beach.
On that occasion, Alex Brace, who spotted the shark, said: “It was near us for a good two or three minutes and then it started heading off towards Saundersfoot. The distance between its fins must have been around five or six feet in length, so it must have been about 12 feet long in total.
“That’s the first one I’ve seen. “We do see porpoises and seals but generally not sharks. I’ve spoken to some of the other people who sail on boats around here, and they said seeing one is rare. It was probably in water no more than waist deep. It was quite incredible really.”
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