Great white shark hunt begins off Irish coast

Large grey seals bob on the sandy beach, stacked on top of each other in a vast row.

When an offshore seal suddenly pokes its head out of the waves, visitors on a nearby sea safari boat begin to laugh at its surprised expression.

To tourists, seals look like dogs.

To a great white shark, they look like lunch.

That’s why a team of scientists chose this location, Great Blasket Island in County Kerry, to begin their search for the first great white shark recorded in Irish or British waters.

It’s home to a large population of grey seals, but will anyone come for dinner?

The American non-profit research organisation Ocearch is cautiously optimistic that great white sharks do indeed prowl the waters around Ireland and Britain.

They aim to make history by finding a specimen off the southwest coast of Ireland.

“The shark heard around the world”

“It would be the shark heard around the world,” said Chris Fischer, founder of Ocearch.

“It would be the greatest thing we’ve ever done on the water. It would be the greatest gift we could give to a region of the world for its future, because this shark would show people in that region and other research institutions where they can potentially work and advance the work.”

Aboard a former crab boat that once operated in the frigid Bering Sea, Fischer’s team awaits a breakthrough for a catch of a different kind.

For decades, the possibility of great white sharks in British or Irish seas remained a tantalising prospect, peppered with unconfirmed sightings and the occasional hoax.

A small, endangered population of great white sharks lives in the Mediterranean, and it is thought that sharks from this region may migrate to the eastern regions of the North Atlantic to search for food off the coasts of Spain, France and Ireland.

Confirmed sightings of great white sharks have occurred as far north as the Bay of Biscay, where a young female great white shark was captured off La Rochelle in 1977.

There has never been a confirmed sighting of a great white shark in British or Irish waters, although many scientists believe the conditions are perfectly suitable.

Ireland is home to around 40 species of sharks, including the basking shark, porbeagle shark and the blue shark.

In July, a Galway media outlet reported that fishermen had spotted a “deadly” great white shark off the coast, but online sleuths discovered the video was actually filmed in Australia in 2022.

Around 100 sightings of great white sharks in the UK were studied by expert Richard Peirce, who concluded that around a dozen of them remained “credible”.

Dr Nick Payne, a shark expert and assistant professor in the School of Natural Sciences at Trinity College Dublin, is the lead Irish scientist on the new Ocearch expedition.

An affable academic in Lidl sweatpants, he hails from the shark hot zone of South Australia.

There’s no reason, he said, why he couldn’t also spot a great white shark in his adopted homeland.

“I think given the conditions that we have in Britain and Ireland in terms of water temperature and the type of food that’s available, the type of habitats that exist on the seabed here, I think there’s a really good chance – these are exactly the sort of conditions, it’s like a Goldilocks environment for these animals,” he said.

He continued: “It’s not too hot, it’s not too cold, the food here is good, both here in Ireland and in different parts of the UK.

“This area is potentially a very comfortable place for them. It’s just a matter of trying to find out if they’re here.”

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This research is the Irish leg of Ocearch’s ‘Save the Med’ expedition, aimed at studying the Mediterranean great white shark population.

The team cruised the waters off Spain and France for weeks before moving to Ireland.

They haven’t found a great white shark yet.

Fischer is surprised by the lack of biodiversity on this European trip and says the consequences of commercial overfishing are “frightening”.

Lessons must be learned, he said, from conservation efforts by authorities in Canada and the United States.

It is hard not to detect a slight sense of frustration among his crew, mostly made up of dedicated young researchers, some of whom have been on board for two months.

“It’s been a long time since we’ve seen a fin,” one of them said reproachfully.

The expedition will continue in Irish waters until September 8, when the MV Ocearch will have to return to its home port of Jacksonville, Florida to avoid the Atlantic hurricane season.

With three weeks of work remaining across the Atlantic, time is now against the team as they attempt to find an answer to a persistent riddle in marine science: do great whites visit these shores?