Huge shark 'bigger than a Great White' spotted near popular Wales beach

Holidaymakers on a boat were shocked after a giant marine creature was spotted off the Gwynedd beach.

Reports state the marine creature, which was most likely a basking shark, was almost the size of their vessel. A video clip recorded by Carmel Richardson, who was on a friend's speedboat with her family, caught the creature.

At the time the creature was spotted, the boat was just beyond the safe-swimming zone at Abersoch's Main Beach on the Llyn Peninsula. Initially, the group believed it was s dolphin, however, upon getting a closer look they realised it was something much bigger, North Wales Live reports.

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On the video, they can be heard crying "Oh my God!" and "See the size of that!". After the shark was sighted, two children being towed on an inflatable were quickly pulled in as the boat sped away.

Carmel, 57, a retired M&S manager from Crosby, Merseyside, said she felt honoured to have seen it. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” she said.

“We’d only just tootled out on the water past the yellow buoys. The sea was quite quiet – there weren’t many boats on the water – when my friend Sylia Heath saw something and asked what it was.

“I said it was probably a dolphin. As we got closer, my son Stephen, who was on a jet ski, said, “that’s not a dolphin, that’s a shark!”. It’s not something you expect to see near a beach in Wales.

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“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."

Carmel