IN THIS ISSUE

Fishermen Release Captured Whale  Shark  

 
Dwarka, October 1, 2004: 
A 40 ft long adult whale shark caught in a gill net, was released by the fishermen, off the coast of Mithapur, India. This area is the base of Tata Chemicals whose staff are spearheading a Wildlife Trust of India (WTI) campaign to protect to the world’s largest fish.

In a unique and unheard of gesture on the coast of Gujarat , the fishing boat Kamleshwar Sagar, owned by K R Sea foods, untangled the huge shark from its nets and let it go.

The campaign to save the whale shark, which is run with the support of two industrial giants in the region, Tata Chemicals Ltd. and Gujarat Heavy Chemicals Ltd, has begun to show heartening results. The former has not only provided financial and infrastructural support to the campaign, but its employees have become enthusiastic volunteers in spreading the message.

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2004 Seychelles Whale Shark Monitoring Summary

Whale sharks came in early in June this year. Photo:  Johannes Schwabe

After a dramatic start to this year’s whale shark arrivals, 2004 has been a somewhat disappointing year and raises some major questions about the population of whale sharks in the Indian Ocean .

 Unlike the previous years the season started with a short but early influx in June with a total of 131 sightings (see Sagren Vol 2.2)

Intensive aerial surveys started at the end of July but the first 2 sharks were not located until August 5th off the South of Mahe. There were no further sightings until mid August when a group of 8 sharks was found off South Mahe . By the 20th some of them had moved up to the North West of Mahe before disappearing again.

From mid September fairly regular sightings were made off the South of Mahe which intensified during October with over 26 sharks seen off South East Mahe. Overall a total of 133 flights were flown totaling 218.13 hours in the micro-light: sharks were seen on 87 of the flights with a total of 422 sightings. The maximum number found on an individual flight was 26 with the average being 3.2 per flight or 1.93 sharks per hour.

Whale shark sighting frequency distributions during the 2004 aerial monitoring period.

As sightings were more consistent in the South tagging activities were initiated from the Plantation Club using one of their boats. 

Over the past three years between 13% - 23% of the sharks seen had been tagged in previous years; however in 2004 only 1 shark was found with a tag remnant. The major change in resightings may be biased because so few in-water encounters were recorded this year, a total of 146 encounters with 25 sharks tagged compared to 362 encounters and 65 tagged in 2003.

Overall it appears that the numbers of whale sharks around Seychelles during 2004 were fewer than in previous years and that the sharks encountered were largely new ones to the monitoring programme. The concern is that this might be an indication of a reduction in numbers of the Indian Ocean population however this is not necessarily the case. The data gathered to date shows yearly and seasonal variation in Whale shark occurrences, which is most likely linked to food avail-ability.

Unfortunately, without a regional monitoring programme a change in the population could indeed be happening without any real way to monitor it.