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!