Utila and the Whale Shark

Utila is still one of the few places in the world where you can swim with this majestic creature, at www.DeepBlueUtila.com in conjunction with www.UtilaWhaleSharkResearch.com and www.Ecocean.org they were the first in the world to adopt the Ecocean system and it has proved highly successful With Deep Blue Resort in Utila leading the way in Whale Shark Research. During the main migratory time of March and April Deep Blue Resort spend a month flying in researchers from all obver the world to work with customers to have the experience of a lifetime, with nightly talks and professional insight into this creature.

It is amazing that so little is known about the largest fish in the ocean.What are people trying to do? Where are they seen? What do we know? And the biggest point!

How you can you help?

Researchers all over the world are trying to find out more about the Whale Shark, where do they go? How far do they travel?One thing we do know is that they are rare by 1986 there had only been 320 documented sighting in scientific literature.

In the Pacific Whale Sharks have had satellite tags put on them and have been tracked over a distance of 13,000 kilometers (over 8,000 miles) over a period of 37 months so we know that this is a highly migrationary fish. Satellite tags are improving but at the moment there is a very high failure rate, however they can give us very useful information such as distance traveled, depth and sea temperatures.

All over the world people have been attaching what are called visual ID tags, these are about the size of a check book and made from a material that is like a credit card. These tags have been good at giving limited information; this system relies on divers reporting back the numbers that are on the tag.DNA studies are being undertaken in different parts of the world, which will help in migration studies and finding family groups.Protection for the species is spreading, at the moment they have protection in the waters around Australia, Honduras, India, Maldives, Philippines and USA and in 2002 Whale Sharks were placed on CITES appendix II that gives protection from international trade in products from Whale Sharks.

Tourism is a huge market, it is worth multi millions worldwide, but this has also introduced its own problems and in many parts of the world guidelines for interaction with Whale Sharks have been introduced. The good side of tourism is that is in enabling much more money to be spent on Whale Shark research and highlighting the need for this to people on the street.One of the most exciting new projects is being spearheaded by Ecocean, they are building a worldwide database of Whale Shark photos and using a program that was adapted from a star recognition program it will recognize Whale Sharks if their ‘fingerprint’ is photographed which is the area behind the 5th gill. Thisis a much less intrusive method than the original visual ID tagging where the tag had to be put in the Whale Shark by either hand spear or spear gun.