2010 Season’s End

Well what a variable whale shark season 2010 was! The season has now officially ended with the last two weeks being almost completely devoid of sharks both on morning and afternoon aerial surveys; however, that said, it was still the second best season ever in terms of the number of individual sharks identified and the number of shark encounters logged, only 2006 has produced higher numbers. In total 148 individual sharks were identified by our photo ID programme: 88 were new sharks while 60 had been seen in previous years. In all we had 397 in-water encounters with one shark (sey2005.083) being encountered 12 times during the course of the season.

So what’s been happening over the past two weeks? Well quite a bit really, although we haven’t had the numbers we were still able to operate a few in-water encounter trips and luckily the few sharks we had were very cooperative and allowed multiple and long encounters, as well as the chance to get all the photo IDs and measurements taken. Only four trips were run on which we had a total of eight encounters with six sharks.

The last shark we saw was sey.2005.059. We first saw this shark during this season on 27/09/10 in the south, then again in the south on 13/10/10. Then he was up at Grand Anse on the last day (29/10/10). He was 6m long and on the last day was seen cruising slowly in shallow water through the plankton but not feeding. He is also an Umberto imposter with a big U on his right hand side, much to Abi’s dissapointment!

Sey.2005.059 proudly showing off his Umberto like U .....

Similarly, the pilots weren’t finding many sharks on the aerial survey: during the 25 flights in the last two weeks a total of 14 sharks were sighted with a maximum of 3 on a single flight... but the aerial survey tracks still needed to be worked up each day which kept the interns out of too much mischief! However, we did have a fair bit of spare time during which it became clear that Gareth was not a natural under-water scooter pilot!

Scooters are not Gareth's strong point!

Also, with the end of season fast approaching there was a lot of activity for the traditional end of season / Haloween BBQ and this year the interns took the creative costume theme to new heights! But more of that on the next post!

Whale Shark Awareness Poster Challenge

As a part of our on-going turtle conservation programme funded by the Mangroves For the Future initiative, we recently ran a survey about peoples perceptions and knowledge regarding Seychelles turtles. The results were very interesting and one output was a targeted awareness aimed at school children.

The exhibit drew a lot of interest

As whale shark programme team leader Abi March is both a designer and school teacher, we asked if she would lend a hand to Devis Monthy and Georgia French our MCSS staff tackled with implementing the task. Abi was more than happy to assist (provided she could piggy-back some whale shark awareness into the project) and she came up with the idea of a short turn around ‘Poster Challenge’ for four schools…. Who could come up with the best awareness posters in just one week!

The turtle awareness board with some of the poster entries

Well this Saturday the kids got to show off what they had achieved and the team put together an exhibition at the National Library of the children’s entries as well as information about the MCSS turtle and whale shark programmes.

We also had a board show-casing the photography of Joe Daniels, his first national exhibition… good work Joe!

The exhibition drew a good crowd of visitors from the schools, with their parents and teachers as well as some coverage from the National Press. But more importantly, the posters were brilliant!!! As part of the prize, the winning entry from each school was to be turned into a T shirt design and all compiled as a set of postcards… Abi had worked on the winning entries and had a first transfer print of the T shirts made to give the prize winners and the orders are already flooding in and who would be surprised when you look at the winners:

First prize - International School Seychelles: Sam Benoiton

First prize - Anse Royale Secondary School: Dominic Rene

Do visit our turtle blog for images of the turtle oriented posters!

The full list of winners was:

1st Place

Sam Benoiton - International School Seychelles

Kimberley Marie - Takamaka Primary School

Dominic Rene - Anse Royale Secondary School

Aniella Cherry - Beau Vallon Primary School

2nd Place

Wayne Amelie - International School Seychelles

Karlos Bouzin - Takamaka Primary School

Estelle Lepathy - Anse Royale Secondary School

Audrey Matombe - Beau Vallon Primary School

We will let you all know when the designs are available in their final form… could be a great Christmas present!

Our congratulations to all the entrants and to the team for all their hard work!

Week 8 started slow but ended with a bang...

Wednesday 13th of October our two Whale Shark Research boats headed South from Anse La Mouche full of eager clients excited about the afternoon ahead.

Our first Shark of the day was a 4.5m male, a new Shark for this season and the second time we have had encounters with him. After that things got quiet....very quiet....

Whilst we were waiting our other boat (Blue Boat) had a pod of 20-30 Melon Headed Whales, they played around leaping out of the water and porposing as close as 2m away from the boat! An hour passed by with no sightings of any Whale Sharks when a call came over the radio from our very relieved pilot, Neil, that there were 7 Whale Sharks at the Southern end of Grand Anse beach.

When we got there the Sharks were in 10m of water and barely moving, we were joined by the guys from Save Our Seas in their RIB so there were 3 boats in the area. The two MCSS boats had both their groups in, all on different Sharks and the Save Our Seas guys also had their own Shark. Some of us were even lucky enough to have two Sharks together!

This was another very special day here in the Seychelles. After processing the ID shots we retrieved, through I3S we had 3 Sharks from 2010, 2 from 2005, 1 from 2007, 1from 2008 and one from 2009. In this aggregation of Whale Sharks was ‘Yogi’ one of Abi’s favourite Sharks who has been returning to the Seychelles each year since 2005!

A great ending to the week!

Post and photos contributed by Joe Daniels

Does Anyone Recognise this Shark?

This season is definitely being unusual in terms of the number of 'new' sharks we are finding and the weekend turned up another new shark but with what looks like a tag tether attached to its left flank.

This juvenile male shark was found swimming of North West Mahe in an area with several other sharks when the tag attachment was noted....

As this was a new shark to Seychelles the chances are that this shark had been tagged in one of the other Indian ocean regional monitoring programmes...

If any of the monitoring groups recognise this shark please contact us so we can share the information with you!

Week four brings some unusual behaviour

This week has brought us calm seas, blue sky and clear waters which has made the MCSS crew very happy.

Thursday 23 September the guys headed South and ended up at Capucin Rock, a favourite hang out for Whale Sharks. The team was having a great afternoon with 10 Whale Shark encounters and ideal conditions when they had some unexpected visitors. A large pod of Bottlenose Dolphins was spotted from the boat and soon after the same pod joined Ciara, Dave.S and clients while they were swimming with a Whale Shark close to the rocks, an amazing experience never to be forgotten.

The next day we headed south with, yet again, blue skies and calm seas. This proved for another productive afternoon with 5 new Sharks and 4 old, two of which were from 2009 and the other two were from 2005 and 2006!

The 25 September brought another unforgettable afternoon. The team had two boats heading south full of excited and eager clients. Mariska, Kate, Jenny and Joe were on Reef Diver with Gareth. We managed to find 7m male without aerial support just North of Point Lazare which only stayed on the surface for just enough time for Gareth to snap some ID shots. We then had a call over the Radio from Neil, our eyes in the sky, that he had a nice shark in a sheltered bay in shallow water which is always a treat.

Gareth was the first in and did well staying with the ram feeding shark(swimming fast through the water with mouth wide open).

The clients had a good swim with the 6.5m male, then to our amazement the shark pointed its head to the sky, arched its pectoral fins and started vertically feeding (hanging vertically in the water sucking water down into the mouth) .

This is a very uncommon behavior for whale sharks in the Seychelles and is very rarely observed. The water was so shallow in the bay that in place’s the sharks tale was almost touching the bottom! Another unforgettable afternoon in paradise.

Text and photos by Joe Daniels, one of the 2010 intern team.

Some old friends return...

Week four has started off well with two of our old friends from 2001 making a reappearance; both have been seen before in the last two weeks but it seems that this was the first time they were in the same area together.

Sey.2001.008 was first seen on the 31st of October 2001 and was one of the sharks fitted with an acoustic tag that year and so was also known as Acoustic 4 for some time. He has become a regular having been seen every year since 2006.

Sey.2001.008 photographed off South Mahe on 19th September 2010, Photo Dave Stirling

Week four has started off well with two of our old friends from 2001 making a reappearance; both have been seen before in the last two weeks but it seems that this was the first time they were in the same area together.

Sey.2001.008 was first seen on the 31st of October 2001 and was one of the sharks fitted with an acoustic tag that year and so was also known as Acoustic 4 for some time. He has become a regular having been seen every year since 2006.

The other 2001 repeat visitor is Sey.2001.010 who was first seen on the 3rd of November 2001; he was photographed again in November 2006 and then again this year, so not as regular a visitor as 008 but still nice to see him again.

Sey.2001.010 also photographed off South Mahe on 19th September 2010, Photo Dave Stirling

One of this year’s new sharks must have a story to tell as he was completely missing his dorsal fin which looked suspiciously ‘surgically’ removed.

The shark with its dorsal 'surgically' removed, photo Gareth Jeffreys

There was a report from the Maldives of a whale shark swimming in their aggregation in May 2008 that had its dorsal fin almost severed in a similar straight, surgical cut. Actually of the 57 new sharks seen this year, seven are missing their dorsal fins which is a surprisingly high number and somewhat worrying!

So, lots of interesting sharks this season and our current aerial sighting rate is up to 4.9 sharks per hour so definitely a good season to date!

Week three....

Wow doesn’t time fly when you’re having fun! Certainly the season seems to be zipping along now despite being punctuated by several days of grotty weather when we couldn’t get the microlight aircraft up. Having said that Johan and Neil our pilots have been doing a sterling job of dodging between the showers to give us the aerial support we need.

Its inter-phase time at the Global Vision International project and so we get to do the weekly plankton tows at grouper point which was a great way of passing a rainy morning and several hours of fun for the interns.... who managed to sport a remarkable range of unusual rain-wear! GVI don’t need to worry about the plankton recovery record although Gareth is beginning to catch up on Luke Riley’s long standing record.

Sherry & Jenny braving the rain during the plankton tow... jenny has been banned from wearing polka dots again!

We have had some interesting days in monitoring as well we a lot of new whale sharks appearing, several at the small end of the scale for us at around 3.5 metres.

One of the new small sharks, accompanied by some black & white pilots as well as a bunch of remoras, photo Ciara

We also had a whale shark with a very unusual injury which we suspect might be a bite mark from another ‘toothy’ type of shark; it is a complete oval whole just before the first gill slit on the right side of the shark. What’s a bit worrying is that it appears to be quite fresh so whatever caused it might still be around!

The shark with the unusual injury, possibly from a shark bite? Photo Gareth

Hopefully there will be a few posts from the interns over the coming few days, when they’re not too busy writing up encounter sheets!

Week two and still looking good….

Week two started with the same troubled weather of showers, storms and sunny periods all within the same few hours making our lives difficult and things almost impossible for our micro-light pilots. But after several days of no surveys we took a gamble and the intern team went out to the area where we had been successful at the end of the last week to look for sharks without aerial support.

Well the gamble paid off as we soon found several sharks surface feeding and in fact had 22 encounters with at least seven individual sharks….. who needs aircraft anyway? Among the sharks was a particularly large mail shark nick-named ‘Hooky’ due to the pronounce injury to his tail forming an almost perfect hook.

The very distinctive hook in 'Hooky's' tail, Photo Joe Daniels

The day also produced a number of oceanic mantas found near the whale sharks barrel rolling in the same patch of food…. So a very welcome addition to the afternoon’s activities.

Manta barrel rolling in the dense plankton, photo Ciara McCarten

Another big manta with a bunch of hitch-hiking remoras, Photo Sherrie Chambers

As the week drew to a close the weather finally broke as the rain and gusty winds moved North away from Seychelles allowing our pilots to make aerial surveys once again… Just as well as there were some reasonable numbers of sharks around Mahe for the team to work on! In fact pilot Johan recorded an impressive 42 individual sharks on the morning flight on Friday 10th of September, approaching the record for the Seychelles aerial survey programme of 38 sharks on the 13th of September 2002…

Perhaps this is going to be a season of new records??

First week of monitoring brings some BIG surprises…

The first few days of the in-water monitoring programme brought more than a few unexpected moments. The first day saw an impressive 10 in-water encounters which we all hoped was a sign of great things to come… the 10 encounters after completion of photo ID revealed only 1 new shark and 3 previously identified sharks.

August 31st dawned with reasonable flying conditions and after the morning flight the pilots reported a total of 27 sharks by aerial survey, most of which were in the North…. So we just had to go see who they were!

Well going and seeing were easy… trying to work out who they were was going to be a severe test for both the interns and the team leaders as there were basically three groups of feeding sharks that were alternately charging around feeding on the surface amongst several thousand fusilier fish before submerging, swapping groups and then repeating the whole process!

Once back in the office it appeared we had logged 27 encounters but sorting out the photos was going to take some considerable time. What was apparent was that there were a number of large sharks of 7 metres or more with one close to 10 metres in length…. Such large sharks are very unusual for Seychelles and so perhaps not so surprisingly most were ‘New’ sharks when identified by photo ID.

The first of September arrived with a distinct change in conditions and also shark numbers with a notable decline in the number of sharks reported from the aerial survey; however, we were able to get out for a third consecutive day logging 16 encounters with 7 sharks, 3 new and 4 which had been seen previously.

The rest of the week was a bit of a wash-out with rain and strong winds preventing the micro-light from getting into the air, but the days were certainly not wasted as the team had plenty to do in terms of sorting out the data from the first three days…

The Seychelles Met Office reckons that this period of rain is nearly over with the Inter-tropical Convergence Zone moving North of the Equator once again so we should be back in the water very soon!

First weeks... An Interns View by Kate Nicole

August 23rd – 31st 2010

After a week of settling in and training we had our first day out on the boat. We headed out towards Conception Island, and without aerial support we managed to find three whale sharks to swim with, which was lucky and very exciting as it was for some of us our very first whale shark encounter!

After a few swims we were all back on the boat enthralled by these huge spotty sharks, all very excited when Joe said “ Guys, I think you might want to look over here!” and there alongside the boat was a beautiful five meter whale shark on the surface, so we jumped in again.

On Saturday David and Glynis had a big BBQ for us all, where we all met everyone that would be part of the 2010 season, a great night of delicious food and exciting atmosphere.

We had a few more training sessions and then the week started properly where we took out clients on the boat and we all got a taste of things to come…

But nothing could have prepared us for Tuesday; in the morning we had heard from the micro light that there were some big aggregations of sharks just off Conception Island. The time could not go quicker, we organized ourselves and then waited in anticipation to get on the boat! With only three clients on the boat we were all able to go out. As soon as we stepped on the boat the mayhem began.

On the Southern part of Conception Island we found a group of several sharks feeding on the surface, we put snorkelers in the water straight away, with them all very excited. The ‘spotter’ in the water shouting back to the boat “there’s three, four, no, five!” The pilot was telling us there were more sharks around us; we were going back and forth along the southern part of Conception Island with groups of sharks everywhere. As soon as we got back on the boat, we had a moment to pause and then back in on another shark, it was so exhilarating!

Overall we had twenty eight encounters for the day, an awesome landmark for the start of the season!

A great sign of things to come!

Photos courtesy Joe Daniels

First day of 2010 season off to a good start!

The first day of the season (Monday 30th August) got off to a good start with a total of 10 in-water encounters with potentially 8 sharks in the Conception Channel off NW Mahe. This was also the first day we were able to get our microlight aircraft into the air, so all was good....

Eager team members waiting for the next encounter

Interestingly, the sharks all seemed to be quite big, but that may just be because the team had got use to the smaller Djibouti sharks, but the laser measurements will give us the actual sizes.

Photo-identification was a bit challenging as the visibility wasn't great making the distinction of whale shark spots difficult from floating plankton particles, but the team were soon on it and are currently working the sharks through I3S. So far of the 10 sharks six have been run through the system giving us 3 resighted sharks and 3 new sharks.

Of the resighted sharks one was a male 2001 shark (Sey.2001.008) originally nick-named Acoustic 4 as he had an Acoustic tag attached previously. This is the fifth year he has been seen since 2001 and makes him currently the shark who has remained in the aggregation the longest period (10 years).

Sey.2001.008 (Acoustic 4) is now our longest resident shark in the Seychelles aggregation

The second shark matched was another male shark first recorded on the 6th of June 2008 (Sey.2008.002) in adjacent Bay Ternay Marine National Park and only seen once in that year, so seems to be an early season visitor.

Sey.2008.002 a single visit shark from 2008

The third shark resighted was Sey.2008.017, also a male shark, who was first recorded on the 19th of September 2008, South of Therese Island (about 3 km from where he was seen this time); this shark was similarly only seen once during the 2008 season...

Sey.2008.017 was the second single visit shark recorded on day one

So the season is definitley off to a good start and the interns are getting right into the swing of things...

2010 Seychelles Whale Shark Season Gets Underway

With the arrival of our team leaders and interns, the 2010 Seychelles whale shark monitoring programme has officially started and so this is probably a good time to introduce everyone, and over the coming weeks they will probably have a post or two to contribute. This year our group has a largely Commonwealth feel:

Ciara McCarten:

Ciara is from the UK and is an ex MCSS intern herself; she has also survived a Djibouti whale shark expedition and so is used to full bore whale shark monitoring. Ciara is one of the team leaders and will be jointly responsible for getting the interns trained and organised.

Gareth Jeffreys:

Gareth is also from the UK (if Aberystwyth and Jersey are in the UK still!) and is also an ex MCSS intern; Gareth worked with us last year developing and fine tuning the laser metric method of measuring whale sharks. He is the other team leader and with Ciara will be jointly responsible for training the interns and getting them up to speed with the monitoring techniques.

Abi March:

Abi is also from the UK and is an ex MCSS intern herself; like Ciara she has also survived a Djibouti whale shark expedition and is the current "I3S Queen" which means she is the queen-bee for photo identification. Abi is going to be responsible for the interns well-being and programme administration...

And that brings us to our interns and students:

Sherrie Chambers:

Sherrie is from Australia and has completed an Advanced Bachelor of Science Honours degree in marine and freshwater ecology, geography and environmental science. Sherrie is currently travelling and has just finished a stint in the Maldives with the manta and whale shark programme there and also in Mozambique.

Joe Daniels:

Joe is from the UK and has already visited Seychelles as a volunteer with the GVI programme; after returning to the UK and getting his PADI Divemaster qualifications he worked in Australia off Ningaloo Reef and Coral Bay which peaked his interest in marine mega-fauna.

Karen Eigeland:

Karen is also from Australia and has completed a Bachelor of Science Honours degree in marine biology and zoology. She has had experience volunteering with Mark Meekan's whale shark group off Ningaloo and using their photo ID system (although she didn’t get to swim with a whale shark there) as well as working with dugong off Queensland.

Kate Nicole:

Kate is from the UK and having completed her studies in design went travelling to New Zealand and Australia where she met up with Joe Daniels; she is a PADI Rescue Diver. Having first learnt to dive in Seychelles she will be familiar with the area and her experience at Coral Bay will hold her in good stead for the whale sharks.

David Stirling:

David is also from the UK and has just completed his BSc; he has volunteer experience with a number of organisations in Honduras, Indonesia and the Philippines, amongst others. He is passionate about sky-diving and free diving so should be right at home on this programme. he also appears to have an even more rapacious appetite than Gareth which should prove interesting!

Mariska van Geldorp:

Mariska is a student from the Netherlands at Leiden University of Applied Sciences and will be joining for both the whale shark programme and a further period monitoring turtles afterwards as a part of her practical experience for her degree. I am sure that she will get lots of support from this team!

Jenny Cook:

Jenny is from the UK and is in her fourth year of a Masters in Marine Biology at Southampton University. Jenny is going to be comparing our Acoustic Doppler Current Profile data from previous seasons to the abundance and distribution of whale sharks as a project for her Masters. Unfortunately, due to term constraints Jenny won't be here for the full programme.

As the team were all here the weekend before the start of the season a pre-season lunch was organised at “Maria’s Hot Rock” café where an excellent range of food is served raw to your table for you to cook on a sizzling hot stone…. A sort of Fred Flintstone Fondue!

In fact “Hot Rocks” is much more than just a café as the Maria’s husband Antonio is a renown (if somewhat eccentric) sculptor and the whole site is a cross between a pirate theme park, sculpture gallery and a Neolithic eatery! All in all a great place for a lunch for everyone to get to know each other better!

Sculpture Antonio had even cleverly though of etching a map of Mahe on a rock in the garden so that the team could start on their local geography knowledge ….

Lunch as always was excellent and Maria’s Creole Cappuccinos just have to be tried to be appreciated!

So for this happy team the season’s work starts now and we wish them success and a lot of fun over the next ten weeks!

Another pre-season shark...

Wednesday 11^th August saw another pre-season whale shark sighting. Dive Seychelles, Underwater Centre were on a morning dive to Lilot when skipper Nigel spotted the unmistakable shadow of the legendary big spotty fish.

Getting closer the divers donned their mask, snorkel and fins and jumped in. The whale shark swam towards diver Jeremy Makchunming who managed to snap the photo below.

Jeremy, 46, is on holiday in the Seychelles from Hong Kong. This was his first wild whale shark sighting though he has observed the captive whale sharks at the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium in Japan.

He was suprised at the sight of the whale shark and couldn’t take in all the details, so instead took a short video and photos, and lucky for MCSS that he did. The photos were perfect for whale shark identification, and closer inspection has revealed that the sighting was another new shark, making it sey.2010.002. Hopefully we’ll sight this shark again and we can determine whether it’s a male or female.

A Large Stork Just Flew By….

Carrying two rather heavy boxes which it deposited on designer and photographer Tony Baskyfield’s desk…

This strange delivery was a baby of sorts… it was the first two boxes of the Whale Shark Book, so a very special moment for Tony who designed the layout of the book and also Dr. David its author!!! I guess that there are quite a few contributors who are anxious to see how their images look also…

Tony’s e-mail to David said “They look brilliant, so I can't wait to get them over to you and to hear your comments.” He certainly does look pretty pleased with himself in the photo!

Pre-sales with YPD Books have been trickling in and so having the actual product in-hand will hopefully boost sales… So if you want a compendium of the most up-to-date information about this the world’s largest living shark it will be released next week with a cover price of £40, but pre-delivery pricing is available on-line through YPDBooks.com at a special price of £35 per copy.

We hope that you enjoy it!

Red Sea Taggers Found!

A short while ago we posted two images of a whale shark with a satellite tag in tow from Sharm Al Sheik and wondered if anyone recognised them or their tags…

Well the whale shark community is pretty small and so it wasn’t long before we found out that Gregg Skomal from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution had been tagging whale sharks in the Red Sea in March with both SPOT and PAT tags. This is a project the work in collaboration with the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia.

So Red Sea visitors, please keep your eyes open there are around 10 of these ‘be-jewelled’ sharks somewhere in the area!

First New Shark of the Season…

As August begins so apparently does the influx of whale sharks to Seychelles and the lucky volunteers at Global Vision International found one of the first of the arrivals on August 3rd in Bay Ternay Marine National Park.

The juvenile shark was quite at home feeding on the thick plankton soup that has appeared over the last few days and allowed the happy volunteers to swim with him for 20 minutes in the late morning before swimming off out of the bay towards grouper Point.

However, just after midday he was back again and this time stayed in the area for over an hour actively feeding among a shoal of fusilier fish.

Unfortunately a large tourist boat from the nearby luxury resort then appeared on the scene so the GVI team backed away to let them see the shark until one of the newcomers grabbed its dorsal fin and the shark immediately dived and left the area.

Having already had their whale shark presentation from Dr. David the GVI team knew both how to behave and also what photos to get and so the next day the images were handed in to MCSS and were quickly run through I3S and the shark was found to be a new shark for Seychelles and so becomes sey2010.001 the first new Seychelles shark for 2010!

So a new shark already and the monitoring team haven’t even arrived yet! Bet they wished they were here now!

Whale Sharks - the book by Dr. D Rowat!!

Things may have seemed to be a bit quite on the whale shark blog over the last few months but behind the scenes there’s been a lot going, not least of which being David finally getting the long awaited book on Whale Sharks completed…

And so after many months of hard work and the input and contributions of a very great many people, the book is now rolling off the presses as we speak! “Whale Sharks – An introduction to the world’s largest fish from one of the world’s smallest nations, The Seychelles” is in A4 landscape format with a hard cover and has 128 pages covering general biology, Ecology, Research and Conservation.

Image wise it is copiously illustrated with 60 stunning full page colour prints and over 200 inset photos from a wide range of contributing photographers. There is also an Information section with details of whale shark programmes globally and while it is not designed as a scientific text it is fully referenced with a bibliography of the scientific reference papers for those keen to follow up on specific aspects.

The foreword is by Dr. Geoff Taylor, the author of the classic 1994 book “Whale sharks – Gentle giants of Ningaloo Reef” and this book hopes to continue the work that Geoff started by providing up-to-date information to the public about this the world’s largest living shark.

The book will be released in mid August with a cover price of £40, but pre-delivery is now available on-line through YPDBooks.com at a special price of £35 per copy.

We hope that you enjoy it!

Calling Red Sea Taggers!

Two images were recently sent to us of a whale shark with a satellite tag in tow sighted off Sharm Al Sheik on 28th May.

There was some discussion that it might be Sammy but this is unlikely as the tag is a towed format and Sammy’s was a PAT…

So if anyone that has been tagging in the Red Sea lately and thinks this is one of theirs do let us know and we’ll put you in touch with the divers that reported it!