The basking shark is NOT an aggressive or dangerous shark. They are very large and powerful fish and like any large animal should be treated with respect. Basking sharks spend much of their time sunning themselves on the surface of the water, often lying with their backs and large dorsal fins completely above the water surface. These sharks feed on plankton, the tiny plants and animals which drift in the water column. The basking sharks feeds by swimming with it's enormous mouth wide open.
Water pours into the mouth of the shark and exits though the gill openings.
Each gill arch contains numerous bristle-like rakers which act like giant filters and allow the water to pass through but trap the plankton and funnel it toward the mouth. Basking sharks may be found singly or in small groups. Those seen in the area of New England are usually travelling singly but they are known to gather in loose schools of up to 100 in areas where there is an abundance of plankton. It is usually in the warmer months of the year that we find this fish in New England waters but it is by no means a warm water fish. Its is believed that those individuals that spend the summer here simply withdraw to deeper water in the fall where the temperatures do not fall so low.