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Whale
shark researcher Mark Meekan, from the Australian
Institute of Marine Science (AIMS), visited the MCSS whale
shark programme in
Seychelles
this October. Mark was accompanied by his family, Carey
McLean, a technician from AIMS, and a film crew from Big
Wave TV Productions who were here to document the whole
visit… with such a high profile group you could almost
guarantee that the whale sharks would instantly get camera
shy!
As
the end of September approached and the number of whale
shark sightings was still appreciably lower than normal,
the whole MCSS monitoring team was beginning to get more
than a little apprehensive about the arrival of the
‘Aussies’, especially as their Ningaloo expedition a
few months earlier had coincided with a notable absence of
whale sharks….
The
aim of the visit was in fact two-fold: firstly it was an
opportunity for Mark to see the Seychelles programme first
hand and discuss with David Rowat (MCSS programme leader)
possibly future collaboration, and secondly it was a
chance for the Big Wave TV crew to capture some much
needed footage to depict the global range of whale sharks
and in particular research programmes in the Indian Ocean.
Mark and David have in fact been collaborating for several
years on whale shark research in one way or another with
David recently visiting the AIMS facility in
Darwin
to work on a comparison of
Seychelles
and Ningaloo whale sharks. Mark’s visit would allow the
early testing of a new satellite-tag fin-attachment that
MCSS had been working on using AIMS and CSIRO technology
and potentially the trial of a new shark-cam video system
that the Aussies had been developing.
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Emma
Ross and Rory McGuinness from Big Wave TV
productions check out the digital images of the
photo shoot.
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However,
the planned visit period was also the birthday for
Mark’s son Sam and so it seemed like a good opportunity
to combine the two, and maybe even get young Sam to swim
with a whale shark on his birthday…… assuming of
course that the sharks would grace us with their company!
Well
the good news was that the sharks did cooperate, at least
to a limited extent. Although the weather was extremely
changeable between the eagle eyes of the micro-light
pilots and Katie Brooks’ in-exhaustible guiding the film
crew got some impressive footage with cameraman Rory
McGuinness proving to be just as agile underwater with a
big HD video camera as most divers are in just scuba. The
sharks even played ball with young Sam’s birthday treat
and he got to swim with his dad next to a whale shark.
While the natural side of things was working out, the
technical side of things wasn’t quite so fruitful…
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Mark
Meekan with the first version of the shark-cam. |
After
many hours of modification, involving Carey McLean
chopping the fins of his surf-board to act as stabilisers,
and exhaustive towing up and down the swimming pool, the
shark-cam was ready for a trial. The plan was that the
camera would be attached by a tether to a whale shark for
a period of 24 hours, after which it would be released by
a custom built device, float to the surface and then a
built in VHF beacon would allow its location and retrieval
for downloading. First of all the VHF transmitter beacon
was tested, and our apologies to motorists along the
East-coast highway who seemed rather bemused by a pick-up
truck with a large VHF radar antennae hunting up and down
the coast for a volunteer hiding under a bush carrying a
large camera with surf-board fins stuck on it. That part
worked okay but as soon as the camera was put onto a boat
for deployment a number of technical hitches arose: first
there were no sharks, then when there were sharks it was
getting too late in the day to guarantee enough daylight
to find it in 24 hours when it popped off. Finally when we
had both a shark and enough daylight time the sharks skin
was so thick we could not get the tag attached, even
though we have used the same tag attachments on over 260
whale shark previously…… in the end time ran out for
the shark-cam.
The
prototype satellite tag attachment faired somewhat better:
the aluminium holster and its supporting collar had been
made by a local engineering shop to specifications taken
from dorsal fin measurements gathered over several weeks
by the MCSS team, and from the attachment bolt dimensions
off the Ramset unit brought in by Mark’s team. The first
two tags were attached and initial location transmissions
were promising; the third tag however proved to be
problematic….. the sharks had obviously spread the word
and had largely disappeared when one was finally
located after many hours of searching it must have
twitched just prior to the tag deploying as the Ramset
bolt missed the dorsal and the opportunity was missed…..
So
now it’s back to the drawing board to work out the next
evolution of the new tag attachment and hopefully to get
the third tag out early next season, in the meanwhile we
hope to start getting some information off the other two
deployed tags.
All
in all we think that it was a successful visit and look
forward to seeing the finished documentary on the BBC in
the coming year. Collaboration with Mark’s team is on
going and the
Indian Ocean
photo ID data sets for 2007 are currently being compared
by the team in
Darwin
.
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