Djibouti 2010!

Well it’s that time of year once again and while most people are looking forward to their New Year’s eve parties a small contingent are beginning to make their way towards a tiny corner of north east Africa named Djibouti, to take part in what is becoming the annual whale shark monitoring programme.

So what’s so special about Djibouti? Well apart from the fact that its one of the few places globally where whale sharks aggregate seasonally, Djibouti’s claim to fame is that the sharks found here are significantly smaller than in the aggregations found in most other areas with an average size below 4 metres.

The programme has its origins with the volunteers of Megaptera who with help from MCSS formed a local non-governmental organisation, the Marine Conservation Society Djibouti (MCSD) to research and conserve the whale shark aggregation. MCSD has now merged with DECAN, a land based NGO who are known for their work on rescuing Cheetahs and other wild-cats in the area, and who still support the whale shark programme.

Luke, Katie (last years team leaders) with David at the DECAN Cheetah Sanctuary last year

This year Dr. David Rowat from MCSS will be assisted by two new team leaders Abi March and Ciara McCarten who volunteered to assist having completed the Seychelles internship programme this past summer. As such they will be helping to teach the skills needed for photo ID and environmental monitoring to participants in the programme.

This year there is a large contingent of participants from the Arabian peninsula in the form of Jonatahn Ali Khan and his team making a documentary for Shark Quest Arabia along with various members of the newly formed Arabian Whale Shark Research Programme who will be learning the field skills they need to monitor whale sharks in their own areas.


The first whale shark research expedition to Djibouti back in 2006 was an interesting mission with a surprising number of sharks encountered; the second in January 2009 was mind-blowing in the sheer number of sharks found.... but an Italian trip just two weeks later found very few sharks...

So there are no guarantees and its difficult to tell exactly what we will find but we will do our best and try to upload updates to our blog as we get the chance!

So fingers crossed...... Djibouti and 2010 here we come!!

Best Wishes Of The Season!!

Arabian Whale Shark Research Programme Conference & Workshop

The Arabian peninsula has long been known for whale sharks and the Straits of Hormuz, the pinch-point between the Persian (Arabian) Gulf and the Gulf of Oman has long been a seasonal hot-spot in the region. Local film-maker and conservationist Jonathan Ali Khan became transfixed with the plight of sharks in general around the Arabian peninsula and as a part of a new documentary series researched the status of whale sharks in the region only to find that very little was known…. And so the concept of a regional group to coordinate information on the whale shark came into existence.


After many months talking with people from the Indian Ocean region and with David Rowat from MCSS in particular, the idea to form an Arabian Whale Shark Research Programme (AWSRP) with a regional conference and technical workshop came into fruition. In a matter of just a few months Jonathan was able to motivate sufficient support to organise the conference: the principle sponsor was the Save Our Seas Foundation with the venue host and sponsor being Le Meridien Al Aqah Beach Resort, Fujirah and with support from the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), the Emirates Diving Association (EDA), the Kuwait Environmental Research and Awareness Group (KERA), Scuba Dubai, Al Boom Diving and Wild Planet Productions.

The meeting was held on the 11th & 12th of December with the overall aim to create an event that would act as a platform of communication and as a forum of discussion between researchers studying Arabian Sea whale sharks to determine relationships and connections between Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean whale shark populations. In order to present the current status of whale sharks, researchers and conservationists from all relevant Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean hot-spots, including Oman, Djibouti, Maldives, Seychelles, India, Pakistan/Baluchistan, UAE and Kuwait attended the event.

The meeting was held under the patronage of His Highness Shaikh Hamad bin Mohammed Al Sharqi, the Crown Prince of Fujirah who attended the opening ceremony and introductory speeches. His Highness is a scuba diver and was keen to support this initiative which was being launched form this forum in his Emirate.

Participants at the AWSRP conference at Le Meridien Al Aqah Beach Resort, Fujirah

Dr. David Rowat from MCSS delivered the keynote presentation setting out what was known, what was still unknown and how an AWSRP could potentially assist in completing both the Indian Ocean and global picture on the species.

The National Newspaper from Dubai wrote: Dr David Rowat, the chairman of the Marine Conservation Society in the Seychelles, said the regional database would yield valuable information that could fill a “knowledge gap” about the creatures. “It has been suggested that the Arabian region might be important as a pupping [birthing] or mating ground but, as yet, we do not know,” he said. “It is too early to say. It is certainly a missing piece of the jigsaw and that piece could be important.”

There was strong support for the formation of some type of network with national information gathering and collating facilities; so far, the Emirates Diving Association, Sultan Qaboos University in Oman, and the Kuwait Environmental Research and Awareness Group have agreed to help set up such structures with the end goal of developing a database of whale sharks from the region that would also contribute to the global database on EcOcean.

Brad Norman, originator of the Ecocean database, was quoted by the National Newspaper: The data, Mr Norman said, could help scientists in a number of ways. “You can start doing the science on finding the actual number of whale sharks visiting an actual country. And, if we continue this from year to year, we can get an idea of whether the numbers are increasing or decreasing. This is a way of tracking whale sharks by using a non-invasive method.”

So the Arabian programme is off to a good start and we look forward to lots of interesting results from them in the years to come!

Gemma’s Shark…. A late addition for 2009

Over the last few weeks or so we have had a number of reports of a juvenile whale shark appearing around the Bay Ternay - Matoopa point area of the North West of Mahe… this isn’t unsusal as we often have a few stragglers hanging around and this little shark seems to like the area.

Despite the reports, the shark was elusive and no-one seemed to have managed to get photographs until the 25th of November when Gemma Jennings, a staff member from GVI, encountered it at around 2.30pm off Anse Major, near to Bay Ternay where the Mahe GVI team are based.


Having heard David’s talks to the volunteers at GVI, Gemma was keen to do her bit and managed to get the right hand side image to run the photo identification programme on. Just coincidentally David was coming onto base later that week to give a talk to the volunteers about whale sharks and so was able to collect the images to run them against the current database.

And…. Gemma’s shark is a new one to the Seychelles catalogue and now has the identity of sey.2009.050 which was in fact the 47th new shark for 2009 bringing the total of sharks identified in 2009 to 89 individuals.


There’s still a few weeks of 2009 to go and so there may yet be some more late additions… maybe a Christmas Shark?

Djibouti Whale Shark Expedition 2010

From January 1st to 14th we will be again running a research expedition to Djibouti aboard the M.V. Deli to monitor the whale shark aggregation in the Gulf of Tadjourah. This year the trip is going to be somewhat different as it will also be a training programme for volunteers from all over the Arabian Peninsula who are involved in setting up an Arabian Whale Shark Research Programme (AWSRP).

Multiple sharks in the 2009 Djibouti expedition

The impetus for the AWSRP programme came local film maker Jonathan Ali Khan who for many years has documented the wildlife of Arabia and became committed to saving Arabia’s sharks before they went the way of so many shark populations. The Djibouti Expedition is once again be organised with Megaptera, a French based NGO, and their partner DECAN in Djibouti.

David & Katie visiting the DECAN Cheetah sanctuary after the 2009 expedition.

Last year the expedition had an amazing two weeks with a phenomenal 826 encounters with an identified 186 whale sharks. That was quite exceptional and we do not expect to get the same numbers again this year, but no matter how many sharks we see, the expedition will be a great opportunity for the keen AWSRP members to learn the skills needed for monitoring whale sharks in their own areas.

Because of the AWSRP involvement the expeditions are almost fully sold out, however, there are two places available for the first week (January 1st to 7th) so interested people should visit our web page for further details.

New records for Seychelles monitoring programme

Now that the frantic activity of the season is over, or suspense in the case of the last week, David has had the chance to start to organise the data sets and have a look in more detail at this years results and there are already some surprises.

Of the 42 sharks that were resighted from previous years, four of these sharks were first seen way back in 2001 where we only got a total of 15 photo IDs. This is a new record for Seychelles and with the exception of a few images taken in 1996 & 1997 it is unlikely that we will be able to find matches to older images.

So who did we have returning to visit? Well two of these sharks are regular visitors and have been seen in four years each:

‘Acoustic 4’ is a male that was originally fitted with a short range acoustic tag and photographed on 24th October 2001has been resighted and photographed on 11th September 2007, 22nd October 2008 and again this year on the 13th September.

'Acoustic 4' photographed when first seen in 2001 (top) and again in September this year.

Sey2001.001, also male, was an un-tagged shark originally photographed on the 6th August and 2nd Sept 2001; he was photographed again on 21st October 2003, 4th October 2006 and this year on the 23rd September 2009.

S201, another male, was first photographed and tagged with a marker tag on the 7th August 2001. He was re sighted and photographed with his distinctive zig-zag pattern on his left side again on the 22nd August and 22nd & 28th October 2005 and this year on 13th September & 22nd October 2009.

S201 wearing his marker tag in 2001 (top) and seen again on the 22nd October this year.

Finally, Sey.2001.007 is another male un-tagged first photographed on the 24th October 2001 but had not been seen again until the 15th of October this year.

So some very interesting things coming to light from this years data and we are hopeful of more to come!

Seasons end….

Well the 2009 Seychelles Whale Shark Monitoring Programme is now officially closed as of the 31st of October although our last in-water monitoring session was in fact six days earlier as a change in the wind seasons put pay to flying for several days and also caused the sharks to move off to more fruitful waters….

So this compiled with the loss of the first ten days of the season have made 2009 one of the shortest monitoring periods in the history of the programme. That said, even if somewhat short, the season has been very productive with 89 sharks identified from a total of 291 in-water encounters which compares very favourably to the figures from 2008 where we were only able to identify 64 sharks from 139 encounters.

Shark statistics:
291 in-water encounters
89 individual whale sharks identified
42 sharks identified from previous seasons
47 new sharks identified this season
81 sharks sexed (71 male and 10 female) 2
1 tissue sample biopsies taken

Aerial Survey:
74 microlight flights completed
140 hours and 59 minutes of survey flown
443 whale shark sightings recorded

Boat Trips:
43 boat trips operated
95 hours and 25 mins spent on survey

As with last year season’s end was also Halloween and so it was only fitting that we saw the season out with a Halloween party for the team, friends and colleagues from the Underwater Centre and Global Vision International…

The team with 'Nerdiness' being raised to new heights by John, Torri and Dominique!

While the idea of getting one of the interns to the airport at 05:30 the following morning wasn’t exactly enthralling, it didn’t dampen everyone’s resolve to celebrate a great ten weeks of working with these captivating sharks. This year the costumes were even more wacky than before with Dominique, Torri and John, setting a new level in ‘Nerdiness’; also the pumpkin (or papaya) carving contest attracted a broad range of entries from traditional ‘Jack o lanterns’ to fish and cats…. The cat (Abi) won!

Abi with her winning pumpkin (papaya) carving of a cat.... the fish looked scary!

As has become the norm, David thanked all the interns for a really productive season that not only saw a return to reasonable numbers of sharks encountered but also set new levels in terms of data capture and the highest rate of resightings from previous years to date (47%).

It was also the opportunity to say thank you and goodbye to Luke Riley who has been a team leader for the last two years. Luke is returning to Australia to run his own charter yacht business with his partner Lanni, based out of Coral Bay near Ningaloo, Western Australia. We wish them both well and are sure they are going to get lots of visitors from their time with us here!

Luke had prepared a superb leaving-pack for the interns including a DVD of their time in Seychelles and as a bonus David also presented each intern with a PADI Whale Shark Awareness Specialty certification…..

Luke presenting Abi with her leaving pack... nice job both!

After that it was time for some Halloween fun and games which this year included a ‘biopsy the whale shark’ game (similar to pinning the tail on the donkey) which was made all the more hilarious by the teams ‘guiding’ their blindfolded team mates into position to biopsy the shark… thank goodness they were better in the water with real sharks than they were at this game!

And so another season is over and David now has some hard decisions to make… firstly about which of the interns will be going to Djibouti at the end of the year and then who to invite back to be a team leader next year to replace Luke…