This 25 ft basking shark made an appearance at the county pier last week.

Apparently it stuck around for a while and even made an encore appearance later that evening.

Basking sharks are filter feeders - they eat kreel, plankton, etc - and are relatively harmless to humans.

Check out the photos here of a brave kayaker who got right up next to the shark (that's a 14 ft kayak and the shark is almost twice as long!)

Click for more photos and a video:
Basking Shark off County Pier PCB , FL 3/17

That is so cool. I saw the video of that the other day. It's great that the kayaker was there to compare the size of the shark.

I don't know if the guy in the kayak knew what kind of shark that was or if he's just brave but he has my respect! Awesome photo too.

OMG, I didn't realize how big that shark was until the kayak came into view. As Roy Scheider said "You're gonna' need a bigger boat"!

Smile you son of a b----