Happy Whale Shark Day!!

Yesterday, 30 August, was International Whale Shark Day! The IUCN red-listed whale sharks are actually sharks, but called ‘whale sharks’ because they are just HUGE!! One of the largest fish in the world, their various body parts such as the skin, cartilage, fins, liver oil and meat, are highly valuable in international markets. The Whale Shark Campaign launched in Gujarat, India in 2004, to save whale sharks that were being hunted across the coast, has saved 412 whale sharks over the last 10 years. Whale sharks are also very common in Cebu, Philippines and Yucatan, Mexico, where ecotourism is promoted to raise awareness of whale sharks, as well as to provide a source of living to the local community. 

However, is ecotourism fully beneficial to the sharks? Recently, whale sharks have begun to aggregate around Oslob in Cebu province, and this aggregation is not entirely natural. Itinerant sharks first began showing up around artisanal fishers who were collecting krill at night time, presumably for making shrimp paste.  Over time the fishers learned that they could hand feed the sharks with portions of their catch and eventually the fishers began retaining the catch from the night before and taking tourists out during the day and baiting whale sharks with krill.

 

Does this sounds like training the animals like how the trainers in the Zoo or Dolphin Lagoon train their animals to perform tricks for the audience? For now, it may sound too far-fetched as the fishers are just baiting the animals. But without any regulations and checks, it may just happen in the near future where these whale sharks are being trained to do stuffs to attract even more tourists. Hence, although I feel that ecotourism is indeed a more sustainable alternative for the local community instead of hunting these poor sharks for the body parts, regular checks and regulations should be put in place so that these wild animals do not become ‘domesticated’.

References

Deep Sea News, "Whale shark ecotourism: the good, the bad and the ugly." Accessed August 31, 2014. http://deepseanews.com/2012/08/whale-shark-ecotourism-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/.

Wildlife Trust of India, "WHALE SHARK CAMPAIGN." Accessed August 31, 2014. http://www.wti.org.in/ProjectsDetails.aspx?ProjId=57.