A sailor has captured amazing underwater footage of the first two basking sharksseen in British waters this year – drawn to the coast by warm weather. Pleasure boat captain Keith Leeves, 56, filmed the enormous beasts as they fed on zooplankton just a few hundred yards from the Cornish coastline. They appear in the area every year but are not normally seen until at least the middle of May. 
But our increasingly warmer waters are luring them earlier every year, and it is thought the warm weather prompted the arrival of these two sharks. Keith, who runs AK Wildlife Cruises on his boat Free Spirit, said: “We went out to try and see the animals as they were feeding. 
“We don’t like to stay with them for too long and risk disturbing them. I think we stayed with them for about half an hour. 
“It’s so exciting to see two this early in the year. As the plankton blooms, I have seen as many as 30, but that isn’t normally until May. “The hot weather certainly helps. You need really good sunlight and we have had a lot of that recently. The zooplankton is able to feed and this attracts the sharks. “In a way, with climate change, it is all changing. We monitor everything and there does seem to this trend of them coming in earlier and earlier.” The sharks were filmed on Wednesday at Cadgwith and Coverack off the Lizard peninsula on the southern tip of Cornwall. 
Basking sharks are the world’s second biggest fish after the whale shark and can grow to 30ft in length. Keith’s crewman Ross Wheeler added: “We had two basking sharks, which is our first for the season, thousands of barrel jellyfish, 11 common dolphin and five harbour porpoise. “We also had 14 puffins and more than 500 Manx shearwaters.” 
