Current News:
Whale Shark Strandings along South African coast:
Second International Whale Shark Conference:
Taiwan Whale Shark fishery closed, its official!!
Migratory Shark Recommendation passed by the Convention for Migratory Species:
EcOcean Receives Award:
Breeding Whale Sharks in captivity?
Whale sharks are deep divers:
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Sodwana Whale Shark Watch celebrates 10 years!:
Whale Shark Strandings along South African coast:
The South African coastline has the highest incidents of Whale Sharks strandings globally.
The reasons for strandings are still unclear to science.
Strandings have been recorded along our entire coastline, from Kozi Bay to Cape Town, with highest concentrations on KZN‘s North Coast. Strandings are often not singular occurrences, but numerous strandings recorded in close time frames.
The 2006/07 Whale Shark season has recorded a high number of Whale Shark Strandings. In October 2006, 6 Whale Sharks stranded between St Lucia and Leven point. There have been a further 4 confirmed strandings in June 2007 between Bhanga Nek and Rocktail Bay.
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Second International Whale Shark Conference:
The National Commission of Natural Protected Areas of Mexico (CONANP) has announced that it will be organizing the second International Whale Shark Conference to be held from the 25 to the 30 of August 2007 in Isla Holbox, Quintana Roo, Mexico.
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Taiwan Whale Shark fishery closed, its official!!
Breaking news is that the Government of Taiwan have approved plans to reduce the 2007 whale shark fishery quota from 45 to 30 and also convert this into 30 tagged whale sharks not dead ones and simultaneously to cancel the quota completely for future years! As the quota for 2006 is closed this means that there will be no more intentional killing of whale sharks by Taiwan!
Conservation organizations in Taiwan have for many months been negotiating with the Authorities to stop the whale shark fishery there. Representatives of the Life Conservationist Association (LCA) and Co-Habitat have had long discussions with the Vice-Chairman Lee of the Council of Agriculture who agreed that the whale shark fishery should stop partly because of the somewhat doubtful economics of the industry with such a low legal tonnage and partly because the Taiwanese wanted to abide by the CITES listing of the species on Appendix II, which requires scientific evidence that international trade will not have a detrimental effect on the species.
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Migratory Shark Recommendation passed by the Convention for Migratory Species:
The proposal to develop an international instrument to conserve and manage endangered migratory sharks was adopted at the recent meeting of the Convention on Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS) in November this year. The proposal was put forward by the governments of Australia, New Zealand and the Seychelles and gained strong support from the meeting with a number of countries keen to get involved in the development of such agreements. It is now listed as Recommendation 8.16/Rev.2 of the Council of Parties (COP) of the CMS.
The Recommendation will apply to all shark species that are listed in the CMS appendixes as being endangered or threatened; currently this lists the whale shark and great white shark while the basking shark was also added to these appendixes at the same meeting.
The Recommendation paves the way to conserve and manage these migratory species throughout their range by developing agreements or Memoranda of Understanding between the countries that occur along the range for a particular species.
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EcOcean Receives Award:
This June the EcOcean digital photo-identification programme, used to match images of whale sharks to enable individual identification, received a prestigious award for its innovative technology. In an award ceremony held at Sun Microsystem's annual JavaOne Worldwide Developer Conference, Jason Holmberg accepted a Duke's Choice Award on behalf of the ECOCEAN Whale Shark Photo-identification Library team (Brad Norman, Jason Holmberg, Zaven Arzoumanian). The award was presented to ECOCEAN by Scott McNealy (CEO,Sun Microsystems) and James Gosling (creator of Java) for "extreme innovation in the world of Java technology."
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Breeding Whale Sharks in captivity?
Two more whale sharks have been installed at the Georgia State Aquarium in an apparent attempt to establish a captive breeding programme. The aquarium, the world's largest, was a $250 million gift to Georgia from Bernie Marcus, co-founder of ‘The Home Depot’, and caused controversy with the arrival of the first two whale sharks last year. The two new arrivals are young female whale sharks, of 3.3 and 4.2 m, who join the two 5.4m males that have been in captivity for around a year now.
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Whale sharks are deep divers:
Scientists have gathered conclusive proof that whale sharks justify their "whale" tag - by diving to depths of up to 1000m, just like many of their mammalian counterparts.
Researchers based in Belize managed to tag a number of the animals off the Belize Barrier Reef. The sophisticated electronic tags recorded water pressure (from which depth could be correlated), temperature and light levels. After a predetermined period, the tags detached and floated to the surface, where they relayed their data back to base via satellite.
That information told the scientists that the whale sharks had dived to depths exceeding 1000m, to feed on swathes of eggs released by spawning shoals of fish. The animals' general living pattern was to stay shallow during the night, feeding off plankton, but to dive deeper in hotter daytime conditions for the egg spawns.
It was also revealed that water temperature at depth could fall to only just above freezing. This would explain why whale sharks, even in tropical waters, have a layer of insulating fat under their skins.
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Sodwana Whale Shark Watch celebrates 10 years!:Whale Shark Watch (WSW) formed by Rob and Samantha Bester, celebrates 10 years of existence this year having been established in 1998. The goal of WSW is to actively collect data on Whale Shark occurrences and behaviour patterns in Sodwana bay, South Africa, thereby contributing information to management strategies for the conservation of Whale Shark in this region.
WSW is a recognised and endorsed project of the Natal Sharks Board, Marine and Coastal Management and Ezemvelo Kwa-Zulu-Natal Wildlife. Whale Shark Watch is in the process of being registered as a Not-for Profit Organisation.
As a non-funded project, Whale Shark Watch offers Interactive Experiences and Educational Awareness of Whale Sharks at Sodwana Bay to sustain data collection. Rob and Sam have already been circulating images of their sharks to other research groups to aid with identification and a regional approach to whale shark conservation
The 2007 whale shark season saw the introduction of the I3S Photo-Identification program so that Sodwana images will now add to the database of the Indian Ocean Whale Shark population records from Mozambique Seychelles and Ningaloo, as well as to the EcOcean global database.
Congratulations Rob and Sam! Keep up the good work!