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East Africa: Gentle Ocean Giant
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The East African (Nairobi)
ANALYSIS
11 March 2008
Posted to the web 11 March 2008
Rupi Mangat
Nairobi
A group of researchers has teamed up with the East African Whale Shark Trust to tag the sharks on Kenya's Indian Ocean coast in order to map ways of saving the species from extinction, writes RUPI MANGAT
THE WHALE SHARK IS ONE OF THE MOST beautiful and biggest fishes in the world, yet we know little about it.
"On my first dive in Kenya," says Volker Bassen, the originator of the East African Whale Shark Trust, now in its third year, "I saw a whale shark. It was the most beautiful fish l had ever seen. I was totally blown away by it. And it was just here, on this beach."
This was in October 1991 in Diani on Mombasa's South Coast, the famed beach of pure white sand forgiving the magical warm waters of the Indian Ocean.
The whale shark is truly awesome. In Kiswahili, it is called Papa Shillingi because its back looks like someone has flung a handful of gold coins on it. Local folklore has it that God was so pleased with the fish for its good deeds that he spread the coins on its back as a reward.
Despite being a shark, it is not a coldblooded predator. Instead, this gentle giant of the sea is a plankton feeder, feeding close to the coral reefs in tropical waters. Instead of the fearsome jaws of the shark, it has baleen teeth that filter the plankton into its mouth.
"But despite its being the largest fish in the world, we know almost next to nothing about it," says Dr Brent S. Stewart, a senior research biologist from the Hubbs Seaworld Research Institute in San Diego, California. His team of researchers has teamed up with the East African Whale Shark Trust to tag the sharks with state-of-the art satellite tags that will help them map ways of saving the species from extinction.
A 2001 incident prompted Volker to become a whale shark activist. When I jokingly say that to be a shark tagger sounds an interesting profession , he replies, "It's not a profession. It's a passion."
"I witnessed an occassion when fishermen caught a whale shark in their net. The caudal fin had become entangled in the net. The fishermen didn't want to cut the net as it would destroy it. Instead, they cut off the fin of the whale shark.
"It was tragic. The shark was a young female in the prime of her child-bearing life. This was a life wasted because the fishermen cared nothing for the shark. Ninety per cent of the whale sharks along the Kenyan coast are males."
This was therefore a double tragedy, because for a species to survive, as we all know, we need the female race.
For the shark, it was a slow painful death as its life bled away. "It was like chopping off someone's feet," Volker explains.
"When I saw that, I realised that something needed to be done to protect the fish, as there was no awareness programme about it."
That was the beginning of the East African Whale Shark Trust. With no funding to work with, Volker was joined by a young woman, Nimu, Njonjo and Simon, a young volunteer.
The goal of the trust is to introduce more environmentally sustainable fishing methods to local fishermen. This means doing away with the fishing nets that the fishermen use and spreading public awareness.
"The fishermen use nylon nets with a 4-inch mesh. These were distributed under a project of the USAid to assist the local fishermen.
"These nylon nets have been outlawed in the US for 20 years. There are warehouses full of them in the US and they don't know what to do with them."
The fishermen spread the nylon nets in the evening near the coral reefs. What happens then is pure destruction.
"The fishermen use the nets when there is no moon so that the animals cannot see them. Every single day, there are seven to eight turtles caught in the nets."
EVEN THOUGH TURTLES ARE creatures of the sea, they are amphibians and need to come to the surface for air. In the nets, they drown. "It is illegal to touch the dead turtles washed ashore," says Volker.
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"You know that nylon never rots," continues Volker. "These nets when lost or left in the ocean become ghost nets trapping any animal that passes - like the turtles and the sharks, especially on moonless nights when they can't see the nets. So what we do for every net brought to us by the local fishermen, we buy it from them and burn it.
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