The first of the season’s whale sharks are now arriving…. We have had several reports of whale sharks around the North of Mahe and a ‘dry run’ on a dive on June 10th, where a single whale shark appeared over 16 divers. However, the only two who saw it were the only pair without a camera (someone’s law at work there!), but now we do have had our first ID of the year!

So here is sey.2010.097 as recorded on the 17th June 2012

On Sunday 17th team members from Global  Vision International saw a whale shark off the Lighthouse at Bay Ternay; although the shark swam off quite fast, they were able to get a couple of ID photographs. The team at MCSS using the I3S software matched the image to a shark first seen on 9th October 2010 around 4.00pm swimming quite deep  of Anse Corail, South West Mahe. The shark was identified as a male of around 6 m and has the local ID of sey.2010.097; however, he was only seen on the one occasion. The shark was not seen in 2011 but its sure nice to see him back again this year!

And here he is again (from 2010) with his distinctive pattern of spots and stripes outlined

GVI seem to be setting a trend as they also captured our first ID in 2011 (on July 25th) so they are off to an early start this year…


We look forward to seeing sey.2010.097 and lots of his friends over the coming months!