Neonatal whale shark found in the Philippines

Shark news wires and internet sites have been set buzzing over the last few days by the news of the capture and release of a baby whale shark near Donsol in the Philippines.

This is the account from the Philippine office of the World Wide Fund for Nature:

“On the morning of March 7th, word reached Nitz Pedragosa, Donsol’s Tourism Officer, that a whale shark had been caught on March 6th in nearby San Antonio, a barangay of Pilar town, adjacent to Donsol. It was allegedly tied up, and being sold. Very quickly she sent Embet Guadamor, a Butanding Interaction Officer (BIO) from Donsol, to inform the town’s Municipal Agricultural officer. Elson Aca, WWF’s Project Leader in Donsol, also came to investigate.”

“As they pulled up to the seashore an hour later, the team was met by Captain Berango, the Pilar police chief. They expected to see a giant animal helplessly stuck, its tall dorsal fin and tail sticking out of the water. But there was nothing there. All they saw was a stick, stuck in sand, with a small rope leading away from it, into the water. Elson walked up to the stick and was amazed to find the smallest whale shark he had ever seen – a mere 15 inches long!”

All 38 cm of neonatal whale shark being measured, still tied to the red restraining 'rope'. Photo WWF Philippines

“The team freed the shark from the rope that was tied around its tail. After checking to see that the animal was unhurt, documenting the discovery, and measuring the shark, they transferred it into a large, water-filled plastic bag to allow it to swim freely while preparing for its release. Less than three hours after the report first reached Donsol, the response team was back on their banca, shark safely in hand. They took the shark out to deeper water, where it was less likely to get entangled in a fish net, and there – they set it free.”

The neo-natal whale shark released from its tether by the rescue team, photo WWF Philippines

The discovery of neo-natal (birth-sized) whale sharks is very rare, so much so that only 14 reports of whale sharks of less than one metre in length have been recorded in the scientific literature and almost all were taken by fishing activities of one sort or another.

However, one large pregnant female was caught in the Tawian fishery in 1995 and fully inspected by fisheries scientists Joung, and Chen. They found that the mother had over 300 developed embryos; most were in leathery egg cases and still had yolk sacs attached. They found the neonates were in three size classes 42–52 cm, 52–58 cm and 58–64 cm; the largest of the embryos were free of their egg-case and had no yolk-sac indicating they were ready to be released.

Bearing this in mind, this discovery in the Philippines of a pup of only 38 cm in length would indicate that it was a very immature pup and is unlikely to have been birthed ‘normally’….

So and how and why this baby whale shark has ended up in a fisherman’s net is something of a mystery but now it has a second chance at beginning a long life…

The full story is available on the WWF Philippines web site or from their global web site.

Seeing Spots – and Lots of ‘Em!

An interns view of the Djibouti expedition...

“There’s three here, two over there and another two coming from over there” – not something you expect to hear when out on a small boat looking for whale sharks, but something I got used to hearing during a week in Djibouti. I know about schools of fish and pods of dolphins but a swarm of whale sharks – that’s new to me! It’s also likely to have you seeing spots when you close your eyes at night!

So, how did it all begin……….one of those random searches of the internet found me reading the MCSS website and the heading “New - Djibouti Whale Shark Expedition” caught my eye. It was only a month away but with some hurried enquiries and lots of grovelling to my wife I managed to snag the last remaining place as a volunteer on the second week.

A really small whale shark of around 2 metres length, photo Mark Bradfield

On meeting up with David, Katie and Luke in Djibouti it was obvious the first week had gone well – having logged so many shark encounters they looked shattered and were still processing data from day 1. After a quick explanation as to how things would work once out on the sea we headed off to a great local restaurant “The Melting Pot” to meet up with the rest of the group (and drink a little rum punch).

Mark learning the data handling routines from Katie & Luke

Transfer to the boat went smoothly and it was bliss to be out on the water heading for our destination, just time to unpack and check out the boat before we arrived and anchored about 100m from the rocky coastline. Having had a look at the data sheets and talked through the specific area of the shark to photograph for the photo database and features to look out for such as scars, accompanying critters, approximate length and sex I was ready to go. Boy was I unprepared for the frenetic activity of the next hour. That first trip out in the skiff put us straight on the sharks with our first encounter within minutes as we spotted the tip of the tail and dorsal breaking the smooth surface of the water. With three encounters in the space of five minutes I soon realised it was hard to store accurate information for each individual shark in your head when so many sharks were coming along in quick succession. Some words of wisdom from Luke and I adopted his system of using my fingers to denote length and sex and taking photos of this information so that all data was stored on the camera. It was then necessary to take a spacer shot between each shark studied so that it was possible to sort the photos later into each individual encounter.

Seeing Spots – and Lots of ‘Em! Two whale sharks vertical feeding

Whilst obtaining this data I was enjoying the real privilege of swimming alongside the biggest fish in the sea (albeit baby ones!) and observing at close quarters their natural feeding activity. Some sharks seemed completely oblivious to my presence and either cruised along at a steady pace with mouth open “ram feeding” or hung almost still except for their pumping gills, vertical feeding. Three sharks hanging in very close proximity vertical feeding was a great sight to behold and getting bumped by a shark while I was at the side of the boat talking to Luke was also memorable. Some sharks were very intrigued by us and came right up for a closer look and were happy to hang around for a while. As well as the identification photos I was taking, there was time occasionally to get some “fun shots” and video footage. Not always easy trying to get a decent photo of a fish that is 4 metres long, swimming relatively fast through fairly cloudy water (a wide angle or fish eye lens is definitely advantageous) but I came away with a few shots that will make friends jealous.

Mark recording sightings for one of the encounter sessions, waterproof record sheets to hand...

Days fell into a routine of activity with 2 or 3 sessions out on the water either photographing sharks or filling in data sheets followed by on board activities such as transcribing the data and sorting photo files into separate encounters on the laptops. With of course some great meals in between (the catering way surpassed my expectation) and a little alcohol consumption, dancing and lots of talking shark. I did feel a little ineffective in the evenings as my computer skills aren’t great and due to the pressure of processing such a large amount of data, Luke and Katie found it easier to get their heads down and crack on without me. Those MCSS guys may have a dream job but they sure worked hard during the trip!

Even the evenings were not shark free as we had a spotlight positioned at the back of the boat that soon attracted plankton and eventually a whale shark would turn up, sometimes fleetingly but occasionally to stay feeding for hours. One memorable evening three sharks were hanging vertical feeding under the light and the Save our Seas cameramen had finished filming so I grabbed the opportunity to go in. Snorkelling around three feeding whale sharks at night with the light from the spot filtering down through the water was my most memorable experience and I got some fantastic photos (by my standard!).

The three night time dancers under the flood-light, photo Mark Bradfield

There’s lots I haven’t even mentioned, such as the cruise up into the Ghoubet, the visit to Lac Assal (and the purchase of a certain salty goats head), the (mostly) memorable evening spent at the “Scotch Club” and the very enthusiastic on board dancing of a certain Frenchman (you know who you are Michel!). All fantastic fun and the whole trip was just so well run and packed with memorable events and places.

Mark and Katie landing on Devil's island in the Ghoubet Kharab (Devil's Goblet!)

But how to sum things up……………Well, 23 whale shark encounters in a two hour session for me sums this place up. It is a special place and obviously a very important place for the whale shark. Much remains unknown about why they are here, where they come from and where they go next. I for one would love to know the answer. Hopefully the data obtained will help answer these questions but no doubt more data will be needed and I just might be tempted to go and see just a few more spots……….Thanks again to all from Megaptera and MCSS plus the crew for a fantastically well run, enjoyable and rewarding experience.

Mark Bradfield, Shark Trust Volunteer Regional Secretary.

Sammy The Whale Shark Still In Captivity

Whale shark enthusiasts cannot have missed the furore that was caused by the capture and internment of a juvenile whale shark as an attraction in a huge glass tank at the Atlantis hotel on Dubai’s Palm Jumeriah.

The 13 ft female whale shark was caught on August 20th last year "supposedly" struggling in shallow water. The hotel’s story is that the shark was put in the aquarium for "medical care and observation" and that they would release her. But now five months later Sammy, as she has been named, is still in captivity and the managing director of the hotel, Alan Leibman, was reported saying that they had no plans on releasing the whale shark.

The capture of the shark roused an enormous public outcry in Dubai, which is almost unknown in this advanced Arabic state and prompted the launch of a ‘Free Sammy The Whale Shark’ campaign supported by a Facebook group site. Many local conservation groups took up the campaign and in October Dr Rashid Ahmad Bin Fahd, the Minister of Environment and Water, said the shark will have to be released, but to date the hotel have not complied.

During this last week the World Wildlife Fund has also stepped in demanding the shark’s release but it seems that the hotel isn’t talking to anyone about Sammy: “We have repeatedly tried to contact Atlantis directly and to this day our calls have never been returned” said Lisa Shrake-Perry, UAE World Wildlife Fund conservation programme manager in a letter to campaigners this week.

Tourism operators are also joining the Free Sammy campaign as local newspaper 7 Days reports that a German tour company Takeoff Reisen is boycotting Atlantis Hotel until it agrees to release the shark. Manager Thomas Lohrer advised that his company had received numerous requests for Atlantis but he refused to make a reservation: “I have told my clients that I am not willing to support this tragedy. Most of my clients booked either a different hotel or a different destination”.

The Atlantis Hotel opened to the public with a lavish party attended by 2000 invited guests and rumoured to have cost $20 million. The party on November 20th featured a performance by Kylie Minogue which promptly caused UK charity Marine Connection to drop the singer from their list of supporting celebrities, but not because of Sammy… the hotel also has 20 captive dolphins which the paying public can swim with… these dolphins were captured from the waters surrounding the Solomon Islands.

Meanwhile local conservationists are becoming concerned that Sammy is actually becoming quite sick and Atlantis may indeed be planning to release her, rather than risk her dying in their show tank!

And so while the name of Atlantis conjures up images of a marine utopia, the resort itself is becoming a bit of a pariah and a symbol of arrogance that Dubai’s reputation does not really need.

If you feel that you want to do something positive to Free Sammy then log on to the Facebook site or write a letter to the relevant UAE authorities:

H.E. Obaid Jumah Almatrooshi
Assistant Undersecretary for Fisheries
Ministry of Environment and Water
P.O. Box 1509
Dubai United Arab Emirates
Email: o_almatrooshi@moew.gov.ae

H.E. Majid Al Mansouri
Secretary-General Environment Agency – Abu Dhabi (EAD)
P.O. Box 45553
ABU DHABI
Email: malmansouri@ead.ae

H.E. Dr Salem Msarry Al Dhahiri
Director General Federal Environment Agency (FEA)
P.O. Box 5951
ABU DHABI
Email: salem@fea.gov.ae

Our thanks to the Free Sammy the Whale Shark Campaign for keeping this matter in the public eye and for the information in this article.

Dispatches from Djibouti.... 7. Cheetahs, Lac Assal and farewell to Djibouti

Hitting dry land for the first time was a bit of a shock with several of the team dealing with sea-legs that didn’t seem to work too well on dry land, but there was no time to lose as a visit to a local volunteer group Decan had been organised.

Decan is a non-governmental organisation set up by local vets to provide a sanctuary to local wildlife in particular the big cats such as Cheetahs and Lynx that are losing their natural habitats through urbanisation and grazing by goats and cattle.

Our group was met by Bertrand one of the veterinarians who had set up Decan with Michel Vely several years ago and proudly showed us the reserve that he and local volunteers had created. By simply fencing the area off and stopping the grazers from accessing the site, the whole area had been transformed into a lush savannah with dense brush inhabited by some 16 species of local birds.

But the cats were the high point of the visit and one Cheetah in particular was the star of the sanctuary; Bertrand allowed us to access the staff corridor to visit this grand old lady and she dutifully appeared at the fence to see us! You don’t appreciate how fast Cheetahs are until one suddenly appears at your side at 50 km per hour..... fast doesn’t do it justice!

The big surprise is that these really are big cats... they purr like cats, like being stroked like cats and they lick like cats.... just everything is much bigger, louder and rougher! What a fantastic experience!

After a farewell dinner in Djibouti our last day was filled with a day trip by ‘magic bus’ back past the Ghoubet al Kharab to the totally land locked lake at the end of the Gulf of Tadjourah, Lac Assal, the lowest lake in Africa.

We were aware of the lunar landscape around the Ghoubet, but Lac Assal a flooded volcanic crater was even more bizarre; the lake is filled by hot salt water springs fed from the Gulf making it the saltiest lake on earth, apparently at 40% salinity at 20 m depth it is 6% saltier than the Dead Sea! The shores of the lake are 155 metres below sea level and are marked by vast crystallised salt pans caused by the rapid evaporation of the hot (34’C) super-saline water.

These salt pans are mined by nomadic people who transport the salt to Ethopia by camel train, an ages old tradition that continues to this day.A more recent trade is the sale of curios to tourists but not plastic nic-nacs made in some factory... lots of fantastic crystals and geodes found gleaned from the surrounding countryside with quaint model cars and buses carved from local pumice. One rather odd addition to this array of collectibles are salt crystal structures such as goat skulls that are placed into the lake for several months and recovered and dried to form spectacular if somewhat macabre souvenirs!

And so our time in Djibouti draws to a close, time for a last photo in front of the amazingly decorated ‘magic bus’ before we prepare for what will range from a few hours of flight to up to 38 hours of travel as the team head back to their respective homes...

We have had a fantastic two weeks with many memorable moments; our thanks to Daniel Jouannet for organising the expedition, to the MCSS team for all their hard (and on-going) work with the data collection and compilation and to all the eco-volunteers who joined us to help document what must be one of the most amazing spectacles that many of us have seen.

And so what’s on the board next? Well there is talk of an expedition to the Straits of Hormuz in the Arabian Gulf but otherwise the next main whale shark activity will be the Seychelles programme in August.... David and Daniel are also talking about planning another Djibouti programme for January 2010 so if you are interested do contact us...

Dispatches from Djibouti.... 6. The last few days at Djibouti...

Well our return to Ras Korali was welcomed with a flurry of sharks feeding off Acacia beach in the late afternoon, a pattern that seems to be the norm on this trip. As the expedition is drawing to a close we are slowly coming to grips with the fact that in a few days time we will be back in our respective homes with many of us returning to the European winter with temperatures of somewhere just above zero if that!

The trip has been a great success as far as data collection is concerned... we have logged over 500 in-water whale shark encounters in the 11 days so far with one day still to go; we have currently 115 new sharks identified and added to the database but this is only based on sightings for the first seven days as the photo matching has had to take a back seat to data collection. We have also resighted a number of sharks from previous years including Shiraz, the shark we fitted with a satellite tag in 2006.

Shiraz in 2006 fitted with a towed satellite tag, photo Simon Rogerson.

The sharks we are seeing have been predominantly small juvenile males with many below 3 metres in length and very few greater than 5 metres, the largest being a 7 metre male; as such this is almost certainly an aggregation of very young juveniles but the lack of large adult sharks and in particular pregnant female sharks raises questions as to the area being a pupping ground for the species as has been suggested.

The environmental monitoring has also gone well with a whole swath of plankton samples being collected for analysis as well as matching CTD profiles of the area, although an initial look at this data has suggested that there is very little temperature change from the surface to 50 metres depth... Gavin from the BBC let us attach the CTD to his ROV to get some deeper profile data but even at 70 metres the temperature remained at 25.3’C.

Both PAT tags have been deployed and the local live-aboard boats have all been told about them and will make sure that they are not disturbed by their clients, in fact all were very interested in the programme and promised to send us additional photos for the photo ID database.

Dan Beecham had been beset with problems with the HD video camera housing developing a leak in the first week but this was cured by a replacement housing being shipped over and he had finally got the footage he was after of the whale sharks feeding at night in the flood light off the stern of the boat. Tom Peschak also seemed quietly happy with the images he had captured although there was always another slightly better shot he just could get if only...

As for the eco-volunteers who had joined us, all seemed to have enjoyed the experience, even if they weren’t sure exactly what they had signed up for at the outset! Everyone had soon worked out what bits of the process they were most interested in and all contributed wholeheartedly and no-one shirked their share of the paperwork... thanks all for a great job well done!

One shark in particular had caught our attention over the weeks and given us cause for concern, a 5.5 metre female shark that had a thick rope tied around her tail... we have no idea how long the rope had been attached but it had cut deeply into the top and bottom of her tail and several attempts to remove it over the course of the trip had failed.

With the satellite tags attached, David set this as a goal and had borrowed a serious pair of wire cutters from Captain Armand to try to remove the offending rope.... and the 13th of January proved to be a lucky day as Katie found the shark and David was able to cut through the rope and remove it carefully from around the shark, his good deed for sharks for the week!

And so it is with mixed feelings that we head back towards Djibouti aboard the Deli: on the one hand the expedition has gone very well and we have largely achieved what we had hoped to, on the other the joys of the Northern hemisphere winter and thoughts of weeks of work completing the photo ID analysis is a bit daunting!

Once in port the Deli is immediately invaded by Captain Armand’s excited young children and soon everything is a flurry of activity as equipment is stowed away for the home-bound flights....

Dan seems to have accumulated even more baggage and knows that somehow everything does indeed fit into the myriad of boxes that are amassing on the quay side...

One day left to visit some of the other sites in Djibouti!

Dispatches from Djibouti.... 5. Volcanoes, cracks and the Devil’s Goblet...

The Gulf of Tadjoura owes its existence to the interface between two of the earth’s tectonic plates, the Southern one being the African plate while the northern one is the Arabian plate... where the two meet there is a zone of crustal instability which results in the Gulf of Tadjoura and extends down through Africa as the East African Rift valley. ‘Crustal instability’ is a nice term which includes such things as earth quakes and volcanic eruptions as the two plates move relative to each other... this is where we are!

We weren’t the only ones interested in this area as we soon met up with a BBC Natural History film crew who were going to be filming for an up-coming documentary on the East African rift and were keen to find out more about the whale sharks in the area. And so it was that Deli moved up into the western end of the Gulf into an area that has almost become a land locked lake due to volcanic activity and uplift in the area... this is the Ghoubet al Kharab or Devil’s Goblet and is an almost surreal area bounded by volcanic craters and lava flows.

The wind at this end of the Gulf was relentless, the ‘khamsin’ wind is caused by air on the mountains being in the North and West being heated more quickly than in the lower sea-level area of the Gulf and increase dramatically through the day… in the Devils Goblet they were intense as the walls of the Goblet funneled the winds from off the sea towards the mountain ranges of Ethopia.

We anchored in the lee of Devil’s Island a bizarre volcanic plug that looks like Ayre’s rock dropped into the middle of a large lake! We went out for a first whale shark survey around the island but found conditions on the up-wind side almost impossible and opted to do a plankton tow and CTD profile in the lee of the island instead, followed by a few hours exploring these strange islands.The scenery was very odd and was largely due to the volcanic bed rock of the islands which was then covered in layers of volcanic dust and ash several metres thick.

A landing expedition soon declared the discovery of the islands Apex Predator (a hermit crab) although the team were still convinced that velocoraptors were nesting in the strange round caves carved into the walls of Devils island...So that’s how we came to spend the night anchored in the lee of Devils Island, in the flooded remains of a volcano next to a lava flow that was spawned by the Ardoukoba Volcano in 1978...

Morning arrived and we were still all safe and sound, the Devils Goblet had not swallowed us up in a lava flow and the morning Khamsin wind greeted us as we moved the Deli around the island into the area known simply as ‘the crack’ where the BBC team, Ingrid and Gavin, were filming with an ROV down into the crack between the two tectonic plates.... and apparently there were whale sharks there!

After two hours of luckless searching through the steep sided flooded calderas that are peppered around this area we returned to the Deli and paid a visit to Ingrid and Gavin to see what they were up to with their ROV. The strange contraption was returning from a dive into the crack and we found it bumbling along just above the crack in shallow water, about 25 meters from a young 3.5 m whale shark! This was soon joined by a second shark and shortly a third was seen at some distance from the boat... if the sharks were here then this must be safe after all!

However, three sharks did not a programme make and so it was with some relief that we left the Devil’s Goblet and headed back to Arta and the Ras Korali area to continue our work on the whale shark aggregation... would the sharks be there? We had had a rather disappointing day prior to heading into the Ghoubet and were worried that the massive aggregation may have dispersed for more productive areas.... the evening would tell...

Dispatches from Djibouti.... 4. Satellite tagging, plankton sampling and more

The team is getting the hang of things now and a daily routine has developed that seems to keep everyone happy and to fit in with both the boat’s schedule and the aims of the programme...

Daniel and David are the early-birds with Daniel eager to get out for an early morning whale shark session while David seems welded to the computer, matching spots on big fish... so there is usually a pre-breakfast run for the early morning team followed by two boats on the main morning survey, an extended break over lunch during which time cameras are downloaded and ‘wet’ data-sheets transcribed onto ‘dry’ permanent copies and checked, prior to the afternoon session.

The amount of data being collected is quite phenomenal and making sure it is in order and properly checked has become the priority with Katie and Luke working with each of the recorders to make sure that this side of things does not fall behind. Our new recorders were doing a sterling job with young Morgan finding that shark spotting was equally as taxing as cetacean photo IDs but with Luke and Katie’s help she was keeping the ‘French’ boat’s data in order.

The photo ID has had to take a back seat as it can only be done once the photos have been matched to each encounter record.... also there’s heaps of ID’s to fingerprint and match and this does take time; as we approach the end of the first week we already have in excess of 80 new sharks photo identified and added to the database as well as several resightings of sharks identified from previous years going back to 2003 when the programme first started in Djibouti.

The first satellite tag deployed on a very cooperative 6 m male shark

The first of the satellite tags was also to be deployed at the end of the week and the modified MK 10 PAT tag from Wildlife Computers was made ready to go on its voyage of discovery... the trouble was that David wanted to put it onto a large shark (larger than 5 m) and with eager camera teams waiting to film the process it had to be a very slow moving shark, in fact preferably one that wasn’t moving at all so that everyone could get their photos!


So with this in mind the teams set out in the afternoon to find a shark to meet David’s exacting needs which seemed to be a bit of a tall order as most sharks being found were around 3 metres in length.However, finding slow sharks proved not to be a problem as the afternoon feeding aggregation was kicking off nicely and many sharks were already into vertical feeding mode where they stay stationary for several minutes at a time just gulping in great mouths full of plankton....



Fortune was smiling and a 6 metre male shark was found placidly vertical feeding off Acacia Beach who didn’t even flinch as David attached the tag.... in fact the shark ignored the whole process and just continued gulping which seemed a little ungrateful! So the first tags is out and alive and we hope to start to get regular updates from the tag as well as its full story when it pops off in three months time.


Talking of gulping plankton, the team has been busy trying to find out exactly what the sharks are gulping by running surface plankton tows and conductivity, temperature and depth profiles.... these too had to be modified from the standard five minute tow to a much shorter two minute tow as the volume of plankton being collected was simply too much to process and we had a limited number of plankton sample pots! What was very apparent was the high number of arrow worms (chaetognaths) and sea-butterflies (pteropods) present which are regarded as prime whale shark food in the Seychelles; and while we don’t yet know the species of the arrow worms these guys were huge compared to those found in Seychelles and so it’s no wonder the sharks here seem to be in vertical feeding mode so often.... all will be revealed when the samples get to the lab!