Huge suspected basking shark bigger than Great White spotted off Abersoch beach

Holidaymakers were greeted by a huge creature in the sea near a popular beach in Gwynedd while idling along in a boat.

Almost the size of their vessel, what they saw was probably a basking shark.

Carmel Richardson made a quick video of the incident while she was in a friend’s speedboat with her family.

At the time they were just beyond the safe-swimming zone at Abersoch’s main beach on the Llŷn Peninsula.

Initially thinking it was a dolphin, they moved in for a closer look before realising it was something much bigger.

On the video, cries of "Oh my God!" and "See the size of that!" can be heard. Two children being towed on an inflatable were hurriedly pulled in as the boat sped away.

Carmel, 57, a retired M&S manager from Crosby, Merseyside, described it as once in a lifetime experience.

She said, “We’d only just tootled out on the water past the yellow buoys.

"The sea was quiet, there weren’t many boats on the water – when my friend Sylia Heath saw something and asked what it was."As we got closer, my son Stephen, who was on a jet ski, mentioned - that’s not a dolphin, that’s a shark. It’s not something you expect to see near a beach in Wales."The fin was much bigger than a dolphin’s and when we got closer we could see the size of its body.

"Our boat was 18ft long and the shark was only a bit shorter - we think it was about 15ft in length."

Under the Shark Trust’s code of conduct, swimmers are advised to maintain a distance of at least four metres from the sharks, and 100 metres from the boats. Sightings of these unusual and exotic marine species are likely to become more regular across Welsh coasts if current warming trends continue.

Basking sharks are not uncommon in UK waters but it is rare to see one quite so close to shore.

Frankie Hobro, owner and director of Anglesey Sea Zoo, Brynsiencyn, said another juvenile was spotted by a boat crew off the island’s north coast a couple of years ago. “It’s really exciting to hear of another sighting, especially one so close to shore. From the description, it’s definitely a basking shark.

"Usually they’re seen a little later in the summer. This is quite early in the season, so hopefully we may get more reports in the months ahead.“Most people never see them in the sea,” she said. “It’s only by viewing a model that they can appreciate just how big they are – they are bigger than Great White sharks."