Watch: Scuba divers capture incredible footage of basking sharks off Clare coast

The footage itself was shot by experienced diver Mark O'Leary, who described what he and the other divers witnessed as 'the highlight of my diving career'

A screengrab of the footage captured by diver, Mark O'Leary. Picture: Mark O'Leary/ Instagram: @ringolombardi

A team of scuba divers have captured amazing footage of a cluster of basking sharks swimming off the Clare coast. 

The group from the Kilkee Sub Aqua Club, said they entered the water about a kilometre off the rocks at Kilkee Bay.

Towards the end of their dive, they encountered a group of about or so 20 of the creatures engaged in a courtship dance.

As they reached the shark's location, the team knew they were witnessing something special, and so they decided to put much of their gear back on their boat and swim freely with the sharks for a time.

The footage itself was captured by experienced diver Mark O'Leary, who described what he and his team witnessed as "the highlight of my diving career."

"I couldn't believe my eyes," Mark said. 

"Us divers get very excited even spotting a lobster, but here we had 20 or more basking sharks dancing around us."

Mark said that despite the sharks' size, his group felt relaxed around them. 

"They are very calm and majestic animals," he added.

Basking sharks are the second-largest sharks and fish in the world, with adults usually measuring between five and 7 metres in length, though some closer to 11 metres have been seen. 

Basking sharks usually weigh between 3,000 and 5,500 kilogrammes.

Like the whale shark, the world's largest fish, basking sharks subsist mostly on plankton.

One of their most distinctive features is their incredibly large mouth which, in larger individuals, can open up to three feet wide. 

While the sharks do possess several rows of small teeth, they feed primarily through the use of their 'gill rakers' and 'gill arches' through which they filter their food as they swim along with their mouths open.

A cosmopolitan migratory species, they can be found in all of the world's temperate oceans.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN's) 'Red List' classifies the sharks as an endangered. species, meaning their numbers have been in significant decline.

Though they are endangered, hundreds of the sharks have been spotted off the Clare coast earlier this week.

The sharks are a fully protected species in the UK, Malta, and New Zealand, but not here in Ireland, which is something groups like the Irish Basking Shark Group have been calling for in recent years.