Save the Whale Shark
The whale shark, Earth's largest fish, and the research and conservation efforts underway to ensure their continued survival. Follow the exploits of Dr Simon Pierce and his team as they learn more about these ocean giants.
You can help! Check out how you can adopt a whale shark, make a donation towards this work below or sign up to our newsletter!
Search
Delve deeper:
Tweets:
Loading Tweet...
Connect with us:
An interesting alternative occupation for shark fishermen in the Maldives could be transferred to Mozambique. Better to implement this sort of opportunity before legislation, so that when it goes through the people don’t suffer from a lack in food and income.
A sad discovery in the news today.
Whale Shark on National Geographic’s “Picture of the Day” for April 22nd
The Easter miracle. Not much is known about the reproduction habits of whale sharks, and very few large, pregnant females are ever seen. This whale shark was seen off the coast of Brazil: she is both large and pregnant! The photos were taken by Guilherme Kodja at the Instituto Laje Viva.
Mozambique is becoming well-known among divers for its sun, sand and super-sized fish. Since 2005, we’ve identified over 600 individual whale sharks from the country. That’s about 18% of the known global population of the species! Project AWARE has been supporting whale shark research and conservation efforts in Mozambique since 2006. We are trying to obtain as much information as we can on each shark, and use that information to protect these gentle giants. Thanks to support from Project AWARE, we’re making excellent progress towards securing Mozambique as a safe haven for Earth’s largest fishes. It’s an amazing place, and a great case study of an effective marine conservation programme. This article is the introduction to a series of posts on this project; I hope you enjoy reading more about it over the next few weeks!
ECOCEAN has developed a new social networking ability in its whale shark database. You can ‘like’ a whale shark. (I know we already do). Through Facebook, Twitter, or Google+ you can receive a feed on resightings and other updates of your favorite whale shark. Maybe next we’ll be able to ‘poke’ them!
I’ve just got back from giving a talk at the SEALIFE London Aquarium - absolutely amazing venue! Huge thanks to Gemma Oakley and Jenny Hickman for organising everything, it was a wonderful evening.
It was great to meet some of you there; hope to catch up with you again soon!
We’ve just managed to recover one of our satellite tags from a remote village. We’d been able to track the tag’s location and plot its position on Google Earth, but actually retrieving it was an adventure. As it turned out:
- Two spear-fishers saw the tagged whale shark
- They pulled the tag out, as they thought it might be hurting the shark
- They took the tag back to their hut
- One of their friends told them it was a bomb
- They freaked out, dug a big hole, and buried the tag
- We turned up - much to their surprise!
- They got a small reward, and we got some free coconuts. And the tag!
Just another day in Mozambique :)
Thanks to Peter Bassett for the navigation, Casa Barry Lodge for lending us their 4wd, and especially Gabriel Marime for his mad translator skills!
This was AMAZING! I was lucky enough to enjoy a short swim with a huge female humpback whale, then she decided to come back for a closer look. Awesome.
Tag a whale shark! Here’s a first-person view of what it’s like to put a satellite transmitter on a 7 m shark. Swim long, swim far Mr Sharky…
Our whale shark research (+ Andrea Marshall’s manta rays and Yara Tibirica’s nudibranchs) is featured in the latest (Sept ‘11) issue of X-Ray magazine.
Free download, great article!
MOZAMBIQUE FROM THE AIR
Mozambique is amazing. Yesterday, I had a spectacular reminder.
The view from 178 cm up is okay most of the time. I’ve been pretty happy with it for the last 17 years or so. That aside, sometimes it’s nice to get a wider perspective on what’s going on around the place, so a few days ago it was great to get a message from Janneman Conradie (from Big Blue in Vilanculos) to let me know that he was bringing up a new toy for us to peruse: a microlight plane. Awesome.
Janneman is a great pilot and a committed conservationist. I’ve taken part in a few aerial surveys over the years, so I’m aware of how much information they can provide, but Janneman was quite adamant that this aircraft could revolutionise the way we do marine conservation in Mozambique. He’s right. And how.
