Deadly ‘Great White Shark’ filmed off Galway coast as swimming warning issued

A local Galway fishermen has shared a hair-raising video he captured of what appears to be a shark basking in the waters off the Galway coast.

John McGloin, who took the video, was fishing off the coast of Connemara with his friend Joao Rosa when a Great White Shark approached their boat and got incredibly close.

The shark lingered in the area for a few minutes before heading off, leaving the fishermen at a loss for words after the rare encounter.

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Great White Sharks live in almost all coastal and offshore waters which have relatively warm temperatures of 12 to 24 degrees.

Irish temperatures are only in the lower region of that range during the summer although some scientists believe that sharks are shifting their habitats north as the Atlantic Ocean warms rapidly due to climate change.

The man behind the amazing video told Galway Beo:

“Me and my friend were out fishing and one guy had a fish on when they spotted a fin coming their direction. He took out his phone straight away to try and record.”

“He said that there is no doubt that it is a Great White Shark with about 3 meters in length. The shark was very curious, circling around the boat for a couple minutes until it disappeared.”

“It wasn’t far from the coast and my friend has spotted a few fins in the last few days around the Galway area, mostly in between Spiddal and the Aran Islands. So this is a warning to all the swimmers,” he said.

Despite their depictions in the movie Jaws and across other pop culture as vicious man-eaters, humans are not a preferred prey of the Great White.

They are responsible for the largest number of unprovoked shark attacks on humans but these attacks are rare and normally less than ten occur each year globally.

While the shark in question doesn’t look that white in the video, the ‘white’ in ‘Great White’ refers to the shark’s underside, which is hidden from view.

Males usually measure 3.4 to 4.0 metres in length (11 to 13 ft), and females measure 4.6 to 4.9 metres (15 to 16 ft). The lifespan of Great white sharks is estimated to be as long as 70 years or more.

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