Gujarat and the gentle giant of the seas  

A report published in 2001 by Traffic India on India’s whale shark fishery brought to light the uncontrolled and targeted fishing of the world’s largest fish. The report was further supported by Mike Pandey’s film Shores of Silence that exposed the methods of hunting whale sharks and the trade that accounted for hundreds of landings each season.

WTI subsequently lobbied with the Ministry of Environment and Forests for the whale shark to be brought under Schedule I of the Wildlife (Protection) Act of India in 2001—the highest ever protection to a species. In the year 2002 due to the efforts by India and Philippines, the fish was included in Appendix II of the CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species).

A dipstick survey assigned by the Wildlife Trust of India to Taylor Nelson Sofres in 2004 and conducted in the coastal town of Veraval and inland city of Ahmedabad revealed that awareness levels among adults on poaching and the protected status was as low as 19% in Veraval , the hub of the whale shark fisheries.

The local fishing community also referred to the whale shark as “barrel” because of the widespread usage of plastic barrels in hunting it. A campaign to save the whale shark was thus launched in 2004 to build awareness on its protected status and illegal killings among the local fishing community in order to stop the killings and to urge the general public of Gujarat to protect it.

The Save the Whale Shark Campaign was launched as a multi-pronged campaign with support from two corporate houses in Gujarat that had manufacturing units on the coast. The campaign adopted a strategy of soliciting the support of a popular religious leader – Morari Bapu, who equated the fish to an incarnation of a Hindu deity and accorded it a status of a beloved daughter coming home to give birth.

A life-sized inflatable model, a street play in the local language, theme-based painting competitions in schools, fetes with the whale shark conservation theme, an educational film and public events all worked together to take the campaign from an awareness campaign to a Pride campaign.

Seven municipal corporations of cities and towns in Gujarat adopted the whale shark as its city mascot. Government officials, decision makers and the Coast Guard got involved.

The campaign with its inflatable model and street play in the local language made an impact, so much so that within a year of its launch, a fisherman cut his nets to release an accidentally caught whale shark. He had seen the street play and Morari Bapu’s message had stuck. This incident snowballed into whale shark rescues – fishermen cutting their nets to release the fish. The government came forward with a compensation scheme for damaged nets that provided further impetus to saving this iconic species. To make the process fool proof, WTI provided each boat with a camera to document the process and facilitate claims. This process has now evolved into the use of a specially designed app that fishers use on their phones to document whale shark rescues. A total of 781 whale sharks have been documented on camera till date.

Little is known about the whale shark and scientific studies are a necessity. According to the IUCN, the Indo-Pacific population of whale shark is thought to have reduced 63% over the past 75 years. The Atlantic population is thought to have been reduced by more than 30%. This species has been on the IUCN Red List of endangered species since 2000 due to several factors working against them.

From habitat destruction caused by pollution, climate change, offshore developments and spills, the oceans they inhabit are no longer the same as they once were. These factors may have an impact on multiple aspects of these sharks' lives. For example, their migration patterns may change if the water temperatures no longer remain the same, or if food is no longer available in toxic environments such as oil spill sites, or dead zones.

The WTI project team has tagged eight whale sharks with satellite tags made available by the Gujarat Forest Department. Data has been presented in international conferences and is used by the scientific community. Shri Morari Bapu’s message about the daughter coming home to give birth holds true – corroborated by five instances of whale shark pups found in Indian waters.

The presence of neonatal whale sharks in the Gujarat coastal waters supports the proposition that the Arabian Sea may be a breeding territory for whale sharks. Most records of neonatal free-swimming whale sharks are from open ocean habitats and given the limited swimming abilities of these pups, researchers speculate that they may have been born close to where they were captured. The recorded presence of neonatal whale sharks (size range 50-100 cm) in the Gujarat coastal waters is significant and supports the proposition that the Arabian Sea may be a breeding territory for whale sharks.

At the recently concluded CMS COP13 in Gandhinagar, the whale shark found its pride of place on the wildlife map of Gujarat. Fifteen years of targeted campaign and focused conservation by WTI’s marine team supported by corporate Tata Chemicals has resulted in international recognition for a local project to save the world’s largest fish.