#MarineWildlife - Bathers enjoying yesterday's fine weather in Cork Harbour got up close and personal with a massive basking shark, as some amazing photos on TheJournal.ie and video on Facebook attest.

Yet as regular readers of Afloat.ie know very well, people had nothing to fear from the giant fish as it swam among them - as its diet consists solely of plankton.

The remarkable scene comes just says after a group of at least 12 fin whales was spotted in the Celtic Sea off Pembrokeshire from a ferry crossing from France to Ireland - a possible indicator that the gentle giants might be feeding in the area year-round, according to BBC News.

On a similar note, the Daily Telegraph has a gallery of some of Kent photographer Terry Whittaker's images of dolphins at play and interacting with humans around Britain and Ireland.

But it was a different story off Manhattan Beach in Los Angeles earlier this week, as Mail Online reports, as a group of paddleboarders were joined by what appeared to be a great while shark - the ocean's deadliest predator.

"Once you see it, your knees kind of go weak," said Bo Bridges, who captured some scary close-up images of the dangerous fish with a drone-mounted camera.

#MarineWildlife - The Irish Whale and Dolphin Group (IWDG) has allayed concerns over the fate of Doolin's resident dolphin Dusty as work begins on the Co Clare town's new pier.

Despite the distress caused by her attacks on swimmers last year, Dusty has many loyal supporters - one of whom, Jan Ploeg, shared with the Sunday Independent concerns about the effect of underwater sound waves produced by blasting works in Doolin harbour on the sensitive cetacean.

However, the IWDG's Dr Simon Berrow says there's little to worry about, as Dusty is currently living and feeding at Inisheer, some 8km from the blast site, "so there will be no impact on her".

The IWDG is presently monitoring a 500m zone around the blasting works using passive acoustic monitoring through a hydrophone to ensure no marine mammals are affected by the potentially damaging sound waves.

#MarineWildlife - Today is World Oceans Day, as Krank.ie reports, the day to recognise the wealth and diversity of the planet's seas.

And what better way to celebrate it than to highlight some of the extraordinary marine wildlife that make Ireland's coastline so inviting - starting with this amazing video (via The Daily Edge) of a basking shark in Cork Harbour, captured from overhead by a drone camera.

The enormous shark dwarfs the RIB piloted by our company Ocean Escapes, who shot this incredible footage.

Elsewhere in Cork, the Southern Star highlights this clip of a breaching minke whale off Galley Head.

And the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group has welcomed Ireland's newest solo dolphin, who may not be the friendliest of cetaceans!

Chet the bottlenose dolphin is visiting the South West from across the Celtic Sea, and is understood to be a "non-socialble solitary dolphin who does not seek out or engage with swimmers".

As such, the IWDG is urging any dolphin watchers in the region to be sensible and avoid a repeat of last summer's incidents with Dusty the Doolin dolphin.

#MarineWildlife - The dolphins are at it again! After the recent spectacular superpod that put on a show in Baltimore, artist Vincent Hyland captured this footage of common dolphins in a feeding frenzy with a flock of gannets near Kenmare, Co Kerry.

It's certainly shaping up to be a summer to remember for dolphin watchers in the south-west if this video's anything to go by!

#MarineWildlife - A tip of the hat to @BestBaltimore on Twitter for this video of a dolphin 'superpod' that congregated outside Baltimore Harbour in West Cork yesterday (Thursday 15 May).

Such superpods can comprise as many as 1,000 or more dolphins - so the vast numbers seen here breaching the surface may only have been a fraction of a much larger group.

Early last year researchers captured video of a superpod hundreds of dolphins strong in the Irish Sea, with one describing the scene as "boiling" with the gregarious marine mammals.

#Sharks - The video above shows the terrifying moment when a RIB was literally munched on by a great while shark off the coast of South Africa.

As Mail Online reports, the images were captured by a film crew for the popular YouTube channel MaxAnimal, which specialises in over-the-top wild animal videos.

But this crew got more than the bargained for when they encountered one of the many great white sharks that populate South Africa's waters.

The shark can be seen circling the small inflatable vessel with no provocation from those on board, who were keenly aware of the dangers these marine creatures pose.

And as the footage clearly shows, one side of the RIB is instantly deflated when the giant ocean predator sinks its teeth right in.

Luckily both film crew and shark survived the incident unscathed! Mail Online has more HERE.

Closer to home, an open sea swimmer told the Irish Independent of his own triple-threat shark encounter in St Finian's Bay in South Kerry.

Bur Stephen Lynott had little to fear from these gentle giants, as the three basking sharks were only interested in feeding on the plankton likely kicked up in his wake.

Basking sharks are the second largest fish in the ocean and an increasingly common sight in Irish waters each summer.

#Jellyfish - A giant jellyfish found beached on Dorset's south coast in recent days could be a harbinger of a future invasion of British and Irish waters.

ITV News reports on the metre-wide barrel jellyfish, also appropriately known as the dustbin-lid jellyfish, which was found by a dog-walker on Portland beach.

Despite its fearsome size, the UK's Marine Conservation Society says the Atlantic-native species is harmless to humans.

But warming waters off the UK and Ireland's southern coasts this summer could see them turn out in huge numbers, thriving in a climate that threatens our native marine species, as previously reported on Afloat.ie.

#MarineWildlife - British long-distance swimmer Adam Walker has told of his lucky escape from a shark attack thanks to a protective pod of dolphins.

As the Irish Examiner reports, Walker was swimming 26km across the Cook Strait between New Zealand's main islands last week after spotting a shark on his tail.

But what happened next was even more remarkable, as he soon found himself surrounded by the cetacean bodyguards "protecting me and guiding me home".

Walker's swim of the Cook Strait was the penultimate stage in his attempt to be the first Briton to complete the Oceans7 Challenge, the open sea swimming equivalent of climbing the world's seven highest peaks.

He only has the Irish Channel left to swim to attain the accolade first claimed by West Cork endurance swimmer Steve Redmond two years ago.

#Dolphin - Mixed martial artist Cathal Pendred rushed to the rescue of a stranded baby dolphin at a beach in Co Clare, as BreakingNews.ie reports.

The Boston-based Dubliner, who's currently a contestant in reality show The Ultimate Fighter, was pictured on Twitter yesterday (27 April) retrieving the cetacean calf from the shallows and carrying it to deeper waters beyond the breakers.

Sadly, Pendred reported this lunchtime on his Twitter account news from the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group (IWDG) that the juvenile dolphin beached again in Doonbeg last night.

As the tough man says himself: "I tried my best."

I just spent an hour in the sea at Doonbeg trying to save a baby dolphin. He was very hurt but alive and well now!pic.twitter.com/LlteQKznHj

— Cathal Pendred (@PendredMMA) April 27, 2014

#Dolphins - Two Irish boys have had the encounter of a lifetime after getting up close with Florida's famous tail-less dolphin Winter.

As the Tampa Bay Times reports, the formerly conjoined four-year-old twins Hassan and Hussein Benhaffaf travelled to Clearwater to meet the celebrated cetacean, who was the subject of the 2011 movie Dolphin Tale.

The twins are considered "medical miracles" for the extremely low odds of surviving their difficult separation, after they were born joined from the hip to the pelvis and sharing a liver, stomach and bladder.

But for them, getting to meet Winter - who swims with a prosthetic tail after surviving a crab trap - was even more special.

And it was made possible via another Irish connection, Kevin Carroll of the Hanger Clinic - which developed both Winter's and the twins' prosthetic limbs.

The Tampa Bay Times has more on the story HERE.