In the mean time have a great New Year!
As most people get into the pre-Christmas rush of last minute card writing and present buying scattered around the world a dozen or so people are getting excited about another activity to take place shortly afterwards, the whale shark expedition to Djibouti starting on New Years Day! 
The area is geologically and volcanically active as evidenced in 1978 by the eruption of the Ardoukoba volcano. The seabed shelves steeply from the coast of the Gulf dropping to 100 m depth around two km offshore and to around 450 m depth in the centre of the Gulf of Tadjoura. The volcanic lanscape is dramatic if somewhat stark and the volcanic activity has narrowed the gulf down to form the ‘Devils Goblet’ and then pinched it off entirely leaving Lac Assal completely land locked and evaporating away. The surface of this lake is now 450 m below sea-level and the evaporating seawater has left vast salt pans with dramatic areas of salt crystal structures; this is a must for all visitors to the area and a half day trip has been planned. 
Five whale sharks feeding on tropical krill at night... not quite sure how we would get the photo IDs done on this lot! 
in very deep water to keep away from other predators and only come into shallow waters when they are around 4 m in size. Djibouti with its aggregation of very small sharks may thus be an area close to where the youngsters are. 
The 2009 internship programme will last for 10 weeks from 24th August to 31st October. The first week will be an orientation and training week, week two will hopefully be getting some practice whale shark trips and helping the pilots set up the micro-light aircraft, and as of week three (Sept 7th) the monitoring activities proper will be implemented.
The six interns will work as two teams, one for each monitoring boat, and each team will be supervised by a team leader who in turn will work under the project leader. The two team leaders have worked with the MCSS programme for two years and both have considerable monitoring and volunteer organisational experience. The interns will be accommodated at the MCSS premises on the coast at Glacis, NW Mahe on a self-catering basis. The property has two bedrooms set out dormitory-style for a maximum of four persons each and each bedroom has an en-suite bathroom facility enabling male - female separation. There is a large living-room and kitchen for communal use with washing machine and all usual amenities. There is also a large veranda connecting the living accommodation to the MCSS office. Wireless internet service is available throughout the premises.
The interns’ training and duties will cover the full range of activities associated with the MCSS whale shark monitoring programme including:
- The Seychelles whale shark programme:- findings, achievements, why it exists
The costs of the internship programme, inclusive of shared accommodation and training is Euro 2350 per person for the ten weeks. These costs do include utilities (power and water) but exclude food costs, private local travel and international travel to and from
For more information please download the information file (on the MCSS web site so may be slow!) and if you wish to apply please download and complete the application form.
On Tuesday 18th November BBC2 aired the first screening of the whale shark episode in their series the Natural World, as many of you have contacted us to let us know! This episode documents the work of Dr. Mark Meekan in trying to unravel the mysteries of the whale shark and includes several sequences filmed here in
The episode was made by the Big Wave production company and includes much underwater footage captured in
The episode certainly ranks as one of the most important pieces to raise public awareness about whale sharks for many years and will doubtless be syndicated onto the various TV channels in due course. For those of you who didn’t see it the episode is to be repeated on Sunday 23rd at
While it is always nice to receive photos of whale sharks from visitors, the fact that they were taken off Astove island some 800 miles south of Mahe makes them all the more interesting. Also, the outer islands of
Frank Steinberg's photos of the whale shark swimming over the edge of the Astove wall with two large mottled remoras clinging to its back
Frank’s shark was around 4-5 metres in length with a bite out of the trailing edge of the left pectoral fin. It was accompanied by two very large remoras that were firmly fixed to its back… like the sighting of the shark these were unusual as they were the large mottled brown Remora remora species rather than the slender striped Echeneis naucrates which are the common remoras found on whale sharks around Mahe.
Frank was also able to get underneath the shark as it swam along the top of the famous Astove wall and got a few shots from below which confirm that the shark was a female, also unusual as most sharks found around Mahe are males (see the side bar for this seasons statistics).
The photo series yielded both left and right identity shots which Katie Brooks eagerly fingerprinted through the I3S photo ID programme and then ran against the Mahe whale shark database…. and it’s another new shark! We are now waiting for the arrival of Simon Pierce’s database from
We wonder if there are going to be any further end of season surprises?
One such lucky group were the divers from Dive-Crew, a
And on the 12th of November during a dive on Grouper Point with Dive
After a somewhat belated presentation on the MCSS whale shark programme by Dr. David, Steve was happy to pass on the images for identification. Katie Brooks was more than eager to run them through the I3S system, partly to escape from double checking data from this season, but also to see if this was a known shark or a new one…. And to everyone’s surprise it turned out to be a new shark and became the 38th new shark identified in 2008.
The key identification area that confirms this as a new shark sey.2008.038 !
And so although the season is formally over there are still a few sharks around to distract the team members from the end of season ‘housekeeping’ chores!
Jean-Michel was visiting
After the boat ride back to the dive centre Jean-Michel was introduced to the Dr. David and to team leaders Katie Brooks and Luke Riley, where he was interested to learn about the programme and the broad reach of both intern participation and the work we do. There is another
