Basking Shark or Cetorhinus maximus Despite it's huge size and being the second largest fish in the sea, little is known about the basking shark. It appears on the surface around the UK coast during the summer. The rest of the year it is now believed to live in deeper waters. The female is thought to incubate eggs in its body until they hatch. At birth the 'pups' are about 1.5 metres. Adult basking sharks are up to 11 metres long weighing up to 3,000 kg. Despite it's close relationship to the great white shark the basking shark is a filter feeder living on plankton filtered from the seawater. When feeding a shark can filter around 1.5 million kg of water an hour.

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Picture by ken Byrne