Photo-id scheme notches up 7 year re-sighting

Project collaborator Colin Speedie has just passed on photos that prove to be the re-sighting of an individual basking shark after the longest period we have yet on record. The Basking Shark Photo-ID project has now built up a large database, now held by the Shark Trust in Plymouth, of photographs of individual sharks taken by a number of collaborators, including both ourselves (Marine Conservation International) and Colin. This latest match is between a shark that Colin photographed in 2005 and a picture recently taken by ferry passenger Jim Ashton this year. Not only were both taken in the summer but the shark was in the same area of the Inner Hebrides, 7 years later.