Shark Attacks in Ireland

Why a shark-rich coast has almost no incidents

Ireland sits at the edge of the European continental shelf, washed on its western side by the North Atlantic Drift. The water is cool, between roughly 8 and 17 degrees through the year, rich in plankton and in the mackerel, herring and squid that feed on it. That productivity is why the island is one of the best places in Europe to see a basking shark, why charter boats out of Cork, Kerry and Clare catch and release blue sharks by the hundred every summer, and why porbeagles and tope patrol the reefs and sandbanks. Around thirty species have been recorded in Irish waters.

None of that translates into danger for people, for three reasons that the record makes plain. The first is temperature: the species most often involved in bites elsewhere, bull sharks, tiger sharks and the warm-water reef sharks, do not occur here at all, and the great white has never been confirmed in Irish waters despite decades of rumours. The second is behaviour: the basking shark is a filter feeder with no interest in anything larger than a copepod, and the blue shark and porbeagle are offshore fish-eaters that seldom come within sight of a beach. The third is exposure: Irish sea temperatures keep swimmers in wetsuits and close to shore, and the surf, sea-swimming and diving communities, though large and growing, spend their time in water where large sharks are simply absent.

The result is a database with two lines. One is a wartime maritime loss in which sharks appear only because they were seen around the survivors and the dead; the other is a hooked shark biting the hand that was unhooking it. Neither says anything about the safety of an Irish beach, and that is the honest reading of the record.

Where the two incidents happened, and the coasts that have none

Two entries do not make a map, so the list below places both events and then walks the coasts where people actually swim, surf and dive, with the record for each.

• Off County Cork (September 2018)The only bite in the Irish record. On 1 September 2018 an angler was bitten on the forearm by a blue shark weighing 47 kilograms that he had hooked. The database classifies it as a provoked incident, the injury was to the forearm, and the man survived. It is the sole entry with an identified species.
• 82 miles from Fastnet (July 1917)The only fatal entry. On 15 July 1917 the ship Mariston was torpedoed and sunk 82 miles off the Fastnet Rock, south-west of Cork; the database notes only that one person survived. No injury detail or species is recorded. It is a war loss at sea, not an attack.
• Kerry: Dingle, the Blaskets and the SkelligsNo incident. This is the best basking-shark coast in the country, with animals of six metres and more feeding at the surface off Slea Head in May and June, and swimmers, kayakers and boat passengers have never been harmed by one.
• Donegal and Malin HeadNothing recorded. Basking sharks gather off the north coast in early summer and blue sharks are caught offshore, while surfers use Bundoran and Rossnowlagh year-round without a single entry.
• Clare and Achill IslandNo incident. Keem Bay on Achill was the site of a basking-shark fishery in the mid-twentieth century, and the cliffs of Clare draw sea-swimmers and divers; the record for both is blank.
• Dublin Bay and the east coastNothing in the database. The Forty Foot, Seapoint and the beaches of Wicklow and Wexford host year-round sea swimming in the Irish Sea, where the sharks are small dogfish, smooth-hounds and the occasional tope.
• The south-coast surf and swimming beachesNo incident at Inchydoney, Garrettstown, Tramore or any other beach in Cork and Waterford, the counties closest to both database entries. Both events happened well offshore, on boats.

Every recorded shark incident in Ireland

The stats and the table are produced directly from the SharkSider incident database, which draws on the International Shark Attack File, the Global Shark Attack File and verified local reports and is updated weekly. For Ireland there are two rows, and the decade chart shows one bar in the 1910s and one in the 2010s with nothing between them.

• Recorded incidents2
• Fatal1
• Years covered1917–2018
• Since 20001 incidents, 0 fatal
• Most common activityFishing & boats
• Most identified sharkBlue shark

The most recent incidents

• 1 September 2018 · County CorkFishing — Forearm bitten by hooked shark provoked incidentShark: Blue shark, 47kg · not fatal
• 15 July 1917 · 82 miles from Fastnet, Off IrelandShip mariston torpedoed & sunk — Fatal, only 1 survivorShark not identified · fatal

Every recorded incident

A few notes on how to read what is above. The 1917 entry is fatal because the sinking was fatal; the database includes it as a shark-related sea loss, as it does for a number of wartime losses in other countries, but it is not evidence that a shark killed anyone. The 2018 entry carries the label "provoked" because the shark was hooked and being handled when it bit, which is the standard classification for angling injuries. The activity column groups both under fishing and boats, the species column is empty for 1917 and reads blue shark for 2018, and no entry exists for any swimmer, surfer or diver. The record holds no names, ages or vessel details beyond the ship's name, and this page adds none.

The sharks of Irish waters and what they mean for the record

Blue shark. The only species named in the Irish database, and the shark that Irish anglers know best. Blue sharks arrive off the south and west coasts from June to October following warm water and shoals of mackerel, and the catch-and-release fishery out of Cork, Kerry and Clare handles hundreds a season. The 2018 bite happened exactly where the species meets people: in a boat, with a hooked and thrashing animal being brought alongside. A blue shark in the water beside a swimmer is close to unheard of in Ireland.

Basking shark. The second-largest fish in the world and the one most visitors hope to see. Basking sharks feed on plankton at the surface off Kerry, Clare, Mayo and Donegal in late spring and early summer and are entirely harmless; the only injuries ever linked to them anywhere are from boats striking or being struck by an animal. They appear in no Irish incident.

Porbeagle. A stocky, cold-water relative of the mako and the great white that hunts fish over reefs and banks off the west coast. It has the teeth and the size to injure a person but almost never comes near one, and there is no Irish record of it doing so.

Tope, smooth-hounds and dogfish. The sharks of the Irish Sea and the inshore bays: tope reach two metres but are shy fish-eaters, and the lesser-spotted dogfish and smooth-hound are small bottom feeders that anglers land from piers and beaches. None is capable of a serious bite.

Great white. Despite recurring headlines, no great white shark has ever been confirmed in Irish waters, and the database contains no entry attributing anything to one. The full guide to sharks in Ireland covers all the species and where and when to find them.

Staying safe in Irish waters, going by the record

The two Irish entries share one feature: both happened on boats, far from any beach. That makes the safety advice for Ireland unusual, because the risk it points to is not on the sand at all.

• Handle hooked sharks with care. The one bite in the Irish record was inflicted by a blue shark being unhooked. Keep hands clear of the jaws, use a long-handled dehooker or cut the trace close to the hook, and let the skipper or an experienced deckhand control the fish alongside the boat.
• Respect basking sharks from a distance. They are harmless, but a six-tonne fish and a kayak or a swimmer do not mix; stay well clear, do not touch, and never try to ride or grab one. Irish law and the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group's guidelines both ask for the same.
• The real dangers on Irish beaches are cold water, rip currents and swell. Sea-swimmers and surfers should think about those before sharks; the drowning record for Ireland dwarfs its shark record by orders of magnitude.
• Spearfishers and divers should keep speared fish off their body and in a catch bag, more for seals and conger eels than for sharks, but the habit is a good one anywhere.

If a shark ever did behave aggressively, the advice in our guide on how to survive a shark attack applies in cold water as much as warm: stay calm and vertical, keep the animal in sight, and move steadily back to the boat or shore.

Ireland in the European and world picture

Worldwide, the International Shark Attack File verifies around 60 to 80 unprovoked bites in a typical year, almost all of them from the United States, Australia, South Africa and a handful of tropical islands. Northern Europe barely registers. Ireland's two entries, one a wartime sinking and one a provoked angling bite, are typical of the region: Iceland, Norway and Sweden have records of the same character, a few historic maritime cases and almost nothing involving bathers. Move south to France, Spain and Portugal and the lists grow longer, and only in the Mediterranean and beyond do great whites and other large predators start to appear in them.

Measured against exposure, Ireland's position is even more reassuring: tens of thousands of people now swim in the sea year-round, tens of thousands more surf, and the bather count in the database is zero after more than a century of records. The shark attacks overview shows every country side by side.

Shark attack records around the North Atlantic

To the north, Iceland and Norway share Ireland's cold-water species and its near-empty record. To the south, France covers both the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts, and Spain and Portugal mark where blue sharks and makos begin to appear in incident lists. Across the ocean, Canada shows what a similar cold-water coast looks like on the western side of the Atlantic. Every country we track is on the shark attacks overview.

Written and reviewed by

SharkSider Editorial Team

A small team focused on researching sharks and making marine biology easy to understand. Every page is reviewed against current species records and the SharkSider attack database, and updated when new incidents or research appear.

Published August 19, 2023 · Last updated September 22, 2026 · 2 records for Ireland in the SharkSider attack database (1 fatal), updated weekly.