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Stretching for miles across the horizon, a vast armada of Chinese fishing boats trawl the pristine waters close to the Galapagos Islands. Ostensibly fishing squid, the real target for the 265-strong fleet are sharks to serve the appetite for expensive fin soup, costing up to £350 a bowl, sold in markets across China and Hong Kong. Night and day, the vessels – many the size of a football pitch – ransack the seabed, scooping up not only whale and hammerhead sharks but other species including turtles and birds.

Alexa Groat got the surprise of her life this week while on a deep-sea fishing trip off the southwest coast of Florida. Whale sharks can grow up to 40 feet long and weigh an average of 20 tons. (Source: Alexa Groat) About 12 miles offshore, her group discovered a giant whale shark swimming in the Gulf of Mexico. “We were in shock! I've lived in Florida my whole life and never have I seen anything like it!” Groat said. “Truly the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.” She was out with a group celebrating her sister’s birthday. Groat said she...

The whale — about a year old — came ashore near the county line, bringing with it crowds of people, curious to see the majestic creature up close. But with the curiosity also came sadness for some — why did the whale die? How did it end up washed up on the beach? “I was wondering if it died naturally or if it died from a boat because it looked like he had a lot of cuts on it and that could have been from an engine or something,” said Davenport Milgalter. Authorities say gray whales are migrating by our...

This is the incredible moment a whale shark gulped down a never-before-photographed 'tornado' of plankton. Warren Baverstock, 49, hung a single light off the back of a boat to attract the phytoplankton that the huge fish love to eat - and then waited patiently out in the dark ocean. He was delighted when a 11.4ft juvenile whale shark rose from the depths to gobble up the plumes of gathering food, and he hopped in to capture silhouetted by the light.

INCREDIBLE Basking Sharks filmed from a drone Tobermory Scotland

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In just a short time, one of the rarest sharks in the world went from swimming in Philippine waters to simmering in coconut milk. The 13-foot-long (4-meter-long) megamouth shark (pictured), caught on March 30 by mackerel fishers off the city of Donsol, was only the 41st megamouth shark ever found, according to WWF-Philippines. Fishers brought the odd creature—which died during its capture—to local project manager Elson Aca of WWF, an international conservation nonprofit. Aca immediately identified it as a megamouth shark and encouraged the fishers not to eat it. But the draw of the delicacy was too great: The 1,102-pound...

Hundreds of whale sharks congregate each Summer, probably to reproduce Hundreds of whale sharks, the largest fish in the world, have met up for their annual summer congregation in the Gulf of Mexico. The enormous fish converge in the coastal waters off Cancun from May to September. Some 250 whale sharks have been sighted so far in a positive sign for the species, New Zealand's 3 News reports. A record was set in 2009 with 420 whale sharks reported in a single aerial survey. Local biologist Rafael de la Parra says marine species such as dolphins, stingrays, tuna fish and...

There may never be a better time or place to have an encounter with the world's largest fish than right now off the Alabama coast. For the last few weeks, unprecedented numbers of whale sharks have been seen cruising just a few miles off the beach, their broad snouts and tall dorsal fins breaking the surface as they swim lazily along, mouths agape, sucking in plankton.

High-tech electronic tags on whale sharks, the world's largest fish, have revealed how and where they find food.Researchers in Belize have tracked the sharks as they dive almost a kilometre in search of food, and find shoals of spawning fish in order to eat the eggs. A young whale shark takes a closer look at two divers The sharks grow to 20m in length, and are listed as vulnerable to extinction. The researchers believe their findings will help to plan tourism operations around whale sharks in a way that does not harm the creatures themselves. These new, unprecedented insights into...