We were nearing the end of a fabulous dive just off Bray Head on Valentia Island and were hovering around 5m sandwiched between the surface and the kelp bed below.<\/p>\n
I turned to locate my dive buddy and instead was greeted by a massive grey form coming up from below and swimming directly for me. It is hard to describe and give justice to the experience which followed.<\/p>\n
At first I thought it was the biggest and strangest looking dolphin that ever existed. I was stupefied until it gracefully dived under me and the expanse of this giant shark was revealed.<\/p>\n
Basking sharks are the second largest shark or fish after the whale shark and typically will reach 8m in length. This one was on the smaller size, perhaps 4-5m, but still possessed incredible presence.<\/p>\n
After swimming beneath me, this beautiful creature performed a graceful turn, revealed its ancient profile, then doubled back for a moment before reaching the edge of the kelp and diving back down into the depths.<\/p>\n
This was my first encounter with these gentle giants and left us both basking in the beauty of the encounter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We were nearing the end of a fabulous dive just off Bray Head on Valentia Island and were hovering around 5m sandwiched between the surface and the kelp bed below. I turned to locate my dive buddy and instead was greeted by a massive grey form coming up from below and swimming directly for me. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9340,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3146,3141,3144,3142,263,113,1988,3145,112,1348,3143],"class_list":["post-9339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ancient","tag-baskingshark","tag-brayhead","tag-cetorhinusmaximus","tag-creatures","tag-diving","tag-kerry","tag-megafauna","tag-scuba","tag-sharks","tag-valentiaisland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9339"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9339\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9341,"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9339\/revisions\/9341"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}