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The Marine Conservation Society Seychelles, |
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incorporating the Shark Research Institute Seychelles. |
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ABOUT US
WHALE SHARKS
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Monitoring Whale Sharks Around Seychelles The Seychelles Whale Shark Monitoring programme has been running since 1996 with the principal aim of elucidating the habits of these remarkable sharks and promoting their conservation both locally and internationally. The monitoring programme relies on being
able to identify individual whale The original programme, run in conjunction with the Shark Research Institute New Jersey, relied solely on voluntary funding and support and this is still the core basis of the project now run under the auspices of the Marine Conservation Society Seychelles (MCSS) which incorporates the Shark Research Institute Seychelles. From Summer 2001 the MCSS has also received grant funding from the World Bank Global Environmental Facility for the project under the Seychelles Marine Ecosystem Management Programme. This allowed us to upgrade the technology used and fund some specialist assistance in implementing this aspect allowing a far broader approach to the study of the sharks and the factors that influence their appearance in the waters around Seychelles. From 2005 additional support from the Save Our Seas Foundation allowed us to further increase our monitoring and satellite tracking capabilities.
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The First Step: Finding the Sharks….
A daily survey around the entire island of Mahe is conducted every morning during the season (August to end of October) which allows us to locate the areas where the sharks are. In the afternoons the monitoring boats move to the most productive area and with the support of the aircraft they locate the sharks for the second step.... |
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The Second Step: Identifying the Sharks….
In the early years of the programme the sharks would also be tagged with a visual marker tag to make identification on further sightings easier. This has now been made obsolete through the use of photo-identification and pattern matching computer programmes. |
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The spot patterns behind the gills are unique for each individual (and different on the left to the right) and so much effort is put in to getting images of both sides of each shark for accurate photo ID analysis. The computer program I3S uses a pattern matching algorithm to match the pattern of the spots on the 'new' shark to those of the sharks already identified in the database. This provides a rapid and powerful tool for identifying the sharks in the long term and has been used to confirm matches as much as 12 years apart in Australia.
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| Last Updated April 05, 2009 | Comments or problems on this Web site to the | |
sharks and then record their activities
and movements by subsequent re-sightings. This gives an indication of the
number of sharks around the islands and also what they are doing and where
they go.
The
only reliable way of finding these sharks is while they are at, or close
to, the surface and the optimum way to cover large areas is by aerial
surveys. Unfortunately, such surveys using helicopters or light aircraft
are extremely expensive and so the programme uses the services of a
micro-light aircraft. This has the advantage of slow flight speeds and
economic operation but for safety reasons can only be used in good wind
conditions, which is not always the case during the periods that the
sharks visit.
Once
located the sharks have to be identified and the best way is by direct in-water observation. First the sharks are checked to
see if they have any distinguishing features or an identification tag;
at the same time they are recorded on digital stills or video for later
photo identification and their size and sex is noted.