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German-European
School students with the SPOT4 satellite tag
before deployment. Photo Ingo Lang |
A team of five motivated students from the German European School in Singapore came to Seychelles in August in culmination of a year long project to track the movements of a whale shark using a satellite tag.
The group lead by teacher Ingo Lange, arrived in Seychelles on August 18th with just six days to get up to speed with the MCSS Whale Shark Programme and attach a satellite tag. Luckily, the weather conditions were favourable and whale sharks had been seen in the North West of Mahe for several days and so the potential for deploying a satellite tag was good.
The group had already been planning the project for a while and had started a web site that included information on whale sharks and satellite tracking and would carry a blow by blow account of the ‘Seychelles Expedition’, to be posted to the web site live each day.
Activities started with a thorough briefing on the MCSS project by MCSS Chairman, David Rowat. During their brief stay in Seychelles the group went out on 3 Whale Shark Encounter trips. The first was designated for familiarization, allowing each of the students to see a whale shark and also get used to the physical side of keeping up with a free-swimming 7 metre shark that cruises at up to 2 km/hr!
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One
of the whale sharks feeding in the plankton
rich waters of Bay Ternay. Photo German
European School Team |
On Friday, 19th August, the boys got their first
introduction, the microlight pilot had found several whale
sharks in the channel between Mahe and Conception and
here, in green plankton-rich water they got to meet their
first six meter whale shark. Despite a minor setback with
the group’s underwater video housing, the day was a
success and the camera was rescued before it got
terminally wet, also there was lots of information to be
posted to the web site.
Saturday 20th was satellite tag day. The group had already
worked through the set-up routine with David and they now
rigged the tag for deployment. One end of a 10 meter
stainless steel wire tether was crimped to the tag and the
other to a titanium anchor dart to attach it to the
shark’s back. The afternoon was however frustrating:
while several attempts were made to deploy the tag the
sharks were very uncooperative. This was compounded by
poor visibility and eventually David called the attempt
off, hoping for better conditions on Sunday.
On Sunday morning the microlight found several sharks in
clear water in Bay Ternay but due to the amount of boat
traffic in that area David felt happier aiming for a shark
in the less frequented Conception Channel. This time the
sharks were pre-occupied with feeding and while the
visibility was still poor the sharks were largely
stationary making tagging relatively straightforward.
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| Schroeder's
the whale sharks track as plotted by the team on
Google Earth. Image German European School
Team/Google Earth |
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With the tag successfully attached to a 7 meter male shark
the team could relax and take some additional photos and
then it was back to base to start the hard part…
tracking the shark now named 'Schroeder'. The project is currently live with the
team posting regular updates on the shark’s progress
using satellite imagery from Google Earth.
For more Information visit the schools web
site to track the exploits of ‘Schroeder’.
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