The basking shark’s scientific name, Cetorhinus maximus, roughly translates to “great-nosed sea monster” in Greek. In reality, these placid sharks, found the world over, are totally harmless.

It is the second largest living fish in the world. They use more than 5,000 gill rakers to strain 25 kg of plankton from around 1.5 million litres of water per hour which is around the size of a ...