Whale Shark Tagging Initiative in Maldives

[Mr T.]

I went o 'White Sands' resort in the South Ari Atoll in July this year, we discussed this project then and this in an email from them letting me know how things are progressing.



Dear Brendan,

“Whale Shark online“

Hi everybody!

The frequent whale shark encounters in the south of Ari Atoll have been well recognized already and our whale shark data base is growing weekly.

The idea to create a photo-identification-network on the Maldives – similar to the “ecocean library” www.ecocean.com from the Ningaloo Reef in Australia – has been born quite a while ago.

This project could be realised thanks to the web designer Gerd Bender, one of our regular guest of White Sands, who produced together with his business partner Paul Manthey this website and published it now as a “non-profit-project”. Thanks a lot one more time for this wonderful work!

The web side for whale shark encounters in the Maldives is now online!

Everybody who is interested will find under www.whaleshark-id.net the facts and photographs recording over 350 sightings of whale sharks so far during the past 4 years. These data has been collected by Werner Mischler from White Sands Resort.

Already we got in touch with many different dive centres in South-Ari Atoll to ensure to collect as much data as possible. The participation of different dive centres will help to find out as much as possible of this biggest fish in the world and to have a clear picture of any whale shark sightings in the Maldives.

To identify whale sharks based on pictures has become easier nowadays because more and more guests dive and snorkel with digital underwater cameras and are willing to share their pictures for the research of the whale sharks. Plenty of positive identifications could be done due to photographs and the same animals could be identified over a long time.

Have a look to this side and I’m sure, some of you might recognize „his or her“ whale shark again….

Best regards from White Sands and hopefully see you soon again!

Beat, Werner and the Euro-Divers Team


whitesands@euro-divers.com

[Scubanut]

Cheers Bren,
Both myself and SWMBO, Scubachick, will keep tabs on the website. Of on't Sea Spirit in Feb and we are hoping to bump into at least one of these magnificent species if fish.

Gary

[DanE]

Excellent news. As a side note, it was Werner who taught me to dive

He was talking about this then (Jan '03) and it is good to see this up and running. Swiming with a Whale Shark is one of those things I'll remember even when I'm old and incontinent.

dan