There’s still a buzz in the air after a large basking shark was spotted splashing around sailboats and docks near the Bedford Basin Yacht Club on Friday. Olivia Falkenham was on her way to work at the yacht club when she noticed lots of people pointing and filming something. “I saw a big fin come out of the water, so I pulled over and ran over to see what was happening and I took a video,” she said. “I went up on the balcony and was watching to see if I could see it again and then I saw it come right up under the docks at the Bedford Basin Yacht Club.” Tonya Wimmer, co-executive director of the Marine Animal Response Society, says it’s not unusual to see them in maritime waters. “But this is our first-year hearing of one that far into the Halifax harbour and all the way into the Bedford basin. In the almost 30 years we’ve been doing this, we haven’t had a report of a basking shark specifically,” she says. “A basking shark is a pretty magnificent animal. It’s the second-largest fish, second-largest shark on the planet. They’re easily over almost eight metres in length, so they’re a really large animal, but they actually are quite passive. They’re filter feeders. They swim around and basically filter out the plankton that they like to eat.” Basking sharks are generally harmless and spend most of their time on the hunt for food. “It’s really rare to see them cropping up in a place like a harbor like that. I think the poor animal was lost and confused and didn’t know quite what to make of what had happened to it.” Frederick Whoriskey, an adjunct professor with Dalhousie University’s department of biology, says experts don’t know a lot about its biology. “They come up here in the summer, spring, summer, autumn, when it’s a good time to find food to eat. They kind of disappear after that. Some of it may be them hanging around in low numbers and just going deep and staying deep for the wintertime,” says Whoriskey. “It’s really rare to see them cropping up in a place like a harbour like that. I think the poor animal was lost and confused and didn’t know quite what to make of what had happened to it.” Wimmer says the Marine Animal Response Society didn’t get any more reports of basking shark sightings over the weekend. “I think the biggest thing with this one is that people did call. So it is always good, even for us to get phone calls of animals that seem happy and healthy. And it was really great to see that people were very much respecting the animal.” For more Nova Scotia news, visit our dedicated provincial page
