#04
WINTER 2021
Explore the Marine Megafauna Foundation’s pioneering conservation work
OCEAN GIANTS
SAVING SEA TURTLES
MANTAS OF ZAVORA
WHALE SHARKS OF GALAPAGOS
05
19
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Mantahari Oceancare @mantahari
The Munich fashion start-up "Mantahari Oceancare" was founded in 2018 as a non-profit organization by Tim Noack. During his time as a diving guide in Komodo/Indonesia, one topic touched him above all: the pollution of the oceans by plastic waste. Thus a good portion of their profits is donated to MMF’s marine conservation projects in Indonesia. These projects focus on the protection of manta rays and other marine life and public education, scientific capacity building and government engagement through research and science to enable long-term environmental protection. The startup's product range includes apparel made from recycled PET bottles. To closely engage with the projects on the ground Mantahari regularly adopts individual manta rays (over 150 and counting) and has contributed > USD 30K in project funding.
W W W. M A N TA H A R I . C O M
If you want to help our oceans, now is the time. Join us in saving Earth’s most iconic marine wildlife. DR. ANDREA MARSHALL Co-founder, Marine Megafauna Foundation
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O C E A N G I A N T S W I N T E R 2 0 21
CONTENTS
FEATURES
SAVING SEA TURTLES
MANTAS OF ZAVORA
PG 05
PG 19
WHALE SHARKS OF GALAPAGOS PG 31
M A R I N E M E G A FA U N A . O R G
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DIVE WITH MMF
Raja Ampat 03 – 13 MARCH 2022
Set sail on one of the finest vessels in Raja Ampat, the MV Coralia – recently voted the World’s Best Liveaboard. A classic wooden Phinisi, the MV Coralia was built specifically for dive expeditions. We’ll be visiting the top Raja dive regions from the spectacular Dampier Strait to Misool and, if weather permits, we’ll even make it up to the iconic Wayag archipelago. Your hosts will be the MMF founders, ‘Queen of Mantas’ Dr. Andrea Marshall and world-renowned whale shark biologist Dr. Simon Pierce.
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marinemegafauna.org/trips
WELCOME BACK TO OCEAN GIANTS! For this Winter issue of the magazine, I’ve chatted with Sofia Green from the Galapagos Whale Shark Project about the latest advances in tracking these giant fish, Nakia Cullain of Zavora Marine Lab about the manta rays of Mozambique, and to Dr. David Robinson to learn about sea turtle rescue and conservation with the Dubai Turtle Rehabilitation Project. These conversations have been great, so do check out the video clips at the end of the articles to hear directly from the experts themselves – it’s been fantastic to have the opportunity to talk with these pioneering researchers and conservationists. The full clips are available for MMF Members, which starts at just $10 per month – we’ve had great feedback after launching that program in the last issue. Thanks to all of our Founding Members!
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International travel is slowly but surely reopening, so Andrea and I are super excited to be heading back to Raja Ampat in March to co-host an MMF dive expedition. There are still a few places left on that trip, which should fill up fast now. Hope some of you can join us for some stupendously amazing tropical diving. Finally, we’re rapt to introduce our new partnerships with The Giving Block and Angel Protocol to facilitate MMF accepting cryptocurrency donations. This is an incredibly exciting tech field, and we can now process donations in the most efficient, tax-deductible way for US tax residents. Just sayin’ :) It’s been a lot of fun putting this issue together. I really hope you enjoy reading it! DR. SIMON PIERCE Co-founder, Principal Scientist
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UPDATES New research has shown that whale shark ecotourism in Madagascar is a milliondollar industry:
The International Book Project donated some fantastic books to our Tofo Education Center:
Microplastic ingestion has been documented in wild whale sharks from the Philippines:
The MMF Conservation Team worked with the Barra community in Mozambique to set up a new locallymanaged marine protected area:
FOLLOW OUR CONSERVATION WORK Marine Megafauna Marine Megafauna MMF SE Asia MMF Americas
M A R I N E M E G A FA U N A . O R G
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Saving SEA TURTLES
In conversation with
DR. DAVID ROBINSON
(previous) Juvenile hawksbill turtles, rehabilitated and ready for release. Photo by Simon Pierce
(left) Entangled juvenile hawksbill turtle (below) Barnacle-encrusted juvenile hawksbills washed up during a mass stranding Photos by David Robinson
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SAVING SEA TURTLES
in conversation with DR. DAVID ROBINSON
I moved from the UK to Dubai in 2006 to be part of this project, working under Warren as the assistant manager in
I’VE TALKED TO DR. DAVID ROBINSON PREVIOUSLY ABOUT HIS RESEARCH ON LEOPARD (zebra) sharks. Before David moved to Australia, he worked as a sea turtle rehabilitation expert at the Dubai Turtle Rehabilitation Project. I wanted to chat with him about that work, too!
- Simon Pierce
the aquarium too. I’d worked with sea turtles before, having done my MSc research on leatherbacks in Costa Rica, so that was a great help. In those early days, we were looking after 14–15 turtles sea turtles through the year. As social media developed, we started posting about the turtles we were caring for, and more and more people brought in turtles for us to nurse back to health. The project built fast, and we had 350 sea turtles come through the facility in 2009. Before the DTRP came about, well-meaning people had been trying to rescue turtles themselves. It didn’t always end well. We had tortoises brought to us in buckets of water, as people thought they were sea turtles. Another person used table salt in freshwater to try to give a turtle the right environment. They were doing their best, but it was great to develop a proper facility where we had the expertise to treat the turtles.
HOW THE PROJECT BEGAN
The Burj al Arab and Jumeirah company have been fantastic in supporting the DTRP, building a large indoor treatment
The DTRP, or Dubai Turtle Rehabilitation Project, was founded
facility, even cordoning off their outdoor sea-fed lagoons to
by Kevin Hyland, from the Wildlife Protection Office, in
give the recovering turtles a perfect, safe outdoor habitat to
Dubai back in 2004. People kept on bringing him sea turtles
swim around in. Since 2016 we’ve had a dedicated outdoor
that needed rescuing and, as he was basically a one-man
lagoon system for turtle rehabilitation, partitioned off for
band at the time, he ended up with his bath full of juvenile
turtles of different sizes. The Burj use their massive outdoor
hawksbill turtles. Once it got to the point that he couldn’t
projectors to shine turtle images onto their buildings the night
wash himself at home, he approached the Burj al Arab and
before releases. They’ve really helped raise awareness of
Jumeirah to see if he could use their aquarium facilities.
turtle conservation. We’ve even had celebrities like Novak
Warren Baverstock, who ran the aquarium, was very keen.
Djokovic, Joss Stone, and Michael Palin come in to see the
The aquarium ended up being a great facility for sea turtle
turtles. Everyone loves sea turtles. Kevin overfilling his bathtub
rehabilitation, and it’s all worked out brilliantly.
was the start of something amazing.
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WHY TURTLES NEED TO BE RESCUED There are far fewer sea turtles in the UAE than there used to be. There are only about 13 nesting hawksbill turtle females left in the country. I think the last nest in Dubai itself was about 35 years ago. Before all the development, turtles would have been nesting all over the place, but the beaches just aren’t suitable for turtles anymore. With their numbers so low, rehabilitating and releasing sick and injured turtles makes a real difference to their population. The turtles we rescue usually fall into one of two categories: either they’re ‘cold-shocked’, or they have injuries caused by humans. The first is due to the unique environmental conditions in the Gulf. The UAE is very hot in summer but, believe it or not, it gets quite cold in winter. The Arabian Gulf, which borders the UAE, is a very shallow sea. Even off the coast, 14 miles from Dubai, it’s only 10 m deep. In the summer, it gets heated to over 35ºC, but then as winter sets in it can cool down very suddenly.
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Juvenile hawksbill turtles, rehabilitated and ready for release. Photo by Simon Pierce
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SAVING SEA TURTLES
With their numbers so low, rehabilitating and releasing sick and injured turtles makes a real difference to their population.
Sea turtles are cold-blooded, so they gain their body heat
that had ingested balloons, presumably thinking they were
from the environment. In summer, they’re swimming around,
jellyfish. A lot of smaller plastic pieces will pass through,
they’re eating, everything’s great. Two weeks later, it’s 20ºC
but things like hooks and fishing line, if they get stuck in the
colder. The baby turtles from that year are only about four
intestine the turtle is in real trouble. By the time they wash up
months old at that stage, and suddenly they’re in trouble.
on the beach, it’s too late, and a lot of the large green turtles
Hunting for food becomes difficult, they haven’t got enough
we saw were so weak that we couldn’t save them. Their
energy to rid themselves of parasites, barnacles, or other
intestines had stopped working. We did manage to save a
encrustation. They get sicker and sicker, and if there’s a storm
few though, so we never hesitated to help, to invest the time
they all get washed in – that’s when we get mass strandings
needed for any single animal. We always tried, but the truth is
of these young turtles.
that a lot of them don’t make it.
Fortunately, the baby turtles are pretty easy to fix. They’re
Having safe areas where the turtles can feed, mate, and
usually anemic, so we give them iron. They have infections,
nest is only becoming more important. The UAE government
blood parasites, and heart flukes, which we can treat with
is acting on that, and turtles are protected by law, and there
antiparasitics and antibiotics. They’re generally starving too.
are protected areas to preserve the remaining nesting sites. So
That, we can treat with special post-surgery cat food. They
that’s good.
love it. We use a bird gavage tube to get food directly into their stomach, and they usually perk up straight away and
DEVELOPING TREATMENTS
start feeding naturally again. We had something like 96%
Our ability to treat sea turtles has developed a lot over the
survival rate for these juvenile hawksbills. The vets that we’ve worked with in Dubai have been incredible, helping us develop our protocols so we could get all these turtles back to their homes. It’s a great success story. Other turtles that we rescue, though, need a lot more help. The main injuries we see are from boat strikes, pollution, and fisheries. As human populations have increased, so has boat traffic, which means turtles are at risk of getting hit when they surface to breathe. There’s more plastic floating around too, so the risk of plastic ingestion is going up too, and even things like balloons are an issue – we had two juvenile hawksbills
years. When I started in 2006, we didn’t have the amazing technology we have today, and we’ve worked with some fantastic vets to develop the protocols we need. We can learn a lot by analyzing blood samples from turtles. With the large stranding events we get in winter, we’ve been one of the only projects that could take samples from a lot of different turtles almost simultaneously to find out what’s wrong with them. So when I say the young hawksbills were generally anemic, we’d have samples from 100 individuals sometimes. We wrote a paper on that, with a very talented vet, Valentina Caliendo.
(right) Cold-shocked juvenile hawksbill turtles
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Photo by David Robinson
(right) Green turtle with a broken flipper from boat strike (left) Hawksbill turtle following a boat strike Photos by David Robinson
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SAVING SEA TURTLES
(left, above) Loggerhead turtle recovery after being crushed in the intake pipe of a desalination plant. Photos by David Robinson
There’s a great online turtle rehabilitation community, and
the east coast of the UAE, all the way to the Maldives, up to
we’re always sharing information. Some of these rehab
Sri Lanka, and then into the Andaman Sea. It was incredible,
centers are in remote areas, or they don’t have much
a 7,000 km swim. It was fantastic to see an animal we knew
funding, and it can be very difficult for them to get even basic
so well set off so strong and healthy.
antibiotics. We were lucky to be working in a major city, a
Tagging the larger turtles we release is great, as for months
wealthy city, so for us finance wasn’t an issue. That was an
afterward we can remotely check in on how they’re doing
amazing blessing, especially for the turtles, as we could pool
– where they are, and whether they’re behaving normally.
all our blood sample data and make it available so that other
It often takes the turtles a few days to reorientate themselves
rehab centers could use it too.
following release, but then the older turtles, in particular, often
Turtles have an astounding ability to recover from even the most severe injuries. Watching them manage to re-seal themselves is incredible. If we could get them through that
bolt straight back to near where they washed up – it’s great to see them returning to their familiar foraging areas. Our most recent paper focused on turtle amputees. When
initial infection they usually recovered well. Even when boat
turtles get fishing line wrapped around their front flipper, it
strikes cut right through their shell, we’d literally screw the
can lead to full amputation. We were seeing over ten turtles a
two halves together, and within a month we’d see connective
year with missing flippers. Standard rehabilitation guidelines
tissue appear in the gap. They’d fuse themselves back
were that these turtles couldn’t be released, but we were
together. They’re amazing animals.
seeing them recover and adapt surprisingly well. We decided to release and track some of them with satellite tags to see
TRACKING SUCCESS We had a green turtle brought in on the very first day I started at work, in 2006. We called her Dibba, because that’s where she was found. She had a massive head injury. Sometimes fishermen, if the turtle is thrashing around stuck in their net, will smack them to stun or kill them so they’re easier to untangle. They’re not after the turtle; they just get dumped. Dibba washed ashore, severely injured, and we spent three years looking after her while she recovered. Eventually, we were able to release her, and we glued a small satellite tag to her shell so we could check she was okay. She made the largest journey of any green turtle recorded to date. She swam from
if they could survive back in the wild. It was a gamble, but the alternative was for them to spend the rest of their life in captivity. We know from field data that turtles with one flipper can still reproduce; they’re able to dig nests if they still have both back flippers. Sure enough, these turtles acted normally in the wild. They went back to their regular foraging areas, and their survivorship was the same as other released turtles over the time we tracked them. They all made it. Amputations are on the rise globally, so knowing that these turtles can still be rehabilitated and released is really important – there just aren’t enough turtles out there, and we want to give them the best life we can. Getting them back out into the world is really important.
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Tagging the larger turtles we release is great, as for months afterward we can remotely check in on how they’re doing – where they are, and whether they’re behaving normally.
Hawksbill and green turtles, tagged and ready for release Photo by David Robinson
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SAVING SEA TURTLES Release day in Dubai Photo by David Robinson
CREATING AWARENESS The DTRP started around when social media use started increasing, and we’ve found it to be a great tool for conservation. We can show the rehabilitation process, the turtle’s release, and raise awareness of the issues that turtles face. One turtle we cared for, called Hope, had been hit by a boat. It had completely destroyed her carapace. We did some research into how we could rebuild her carapace, and created a full plastic shell to help her bones fuse back together. She made an amazing recovery; she was out in the lagoon once we dealt with her initial infection, and people really engaged with this turtle that had a big white plastic shell with a red cross on it. She had a huge following, and it was fantastic when we were eventually able to release her back into the wild. Our posts also gave us the chance to share the reality
up, and for us to know we’d sparked something in this next generation of conservationists. We’re really lucky to see sea turtles a lot, but most people don’t, and it’s really important for people to have these experiences. It’s like sharks, too. If people don’t have their own knowledge on what they’re really like, all they know about them is from the media, where they’re usually these scary monsters. When people see the animals themselves, they can form their own opinion, and start caring about their conservation. That’s how change happens. The project itself is going from strength to strength. It’s achieved so much over the years. We’ve released about 2,000 turtles back into the wild that would have otherwise died. When there’s only 13 nesting hawksbill in the country, it really makes a difference. The young turtles won’t be nesting for another 20 years, but we’re giving the species a chance at a better future.
of the job. We were quite real with people, sharing when turtles passed away, and our post-mortem results where we identified what had killed them. If you hide that aspect of it, the horrible injuries from boat strikes, turtles starving to death from plastic ingestion, then nothing will ever change. We need
Watch a sneak-peak of the conversation with David!
people to recognize these threats and stop them happening in the future. Some of our released turtles have been killed too, which hits really hard. We’ve lost five of the tagged turtles to human causes: boat strikes or net entanglement. We can spend three years rehabilitating a sea turtle, getting it healthy again, and finally releasing it. Five days later it’s hit by a boat, and it’s dead. The investment that goes into rehabilitating an animal is huge. Financially, emotionally, and so much of our time. And that can all be wasted in a second. Rehabilitation can be a tough gig. The releases, though, were the biggest reward for us. We’d bring in kids from local schools, and they’d help release the turtles. Sometimes, after a mass stranding of juvenile
Watch the full 30 min conversation in the MMF Member’s Area.
hawksbills, there’d be 150 turtles all being released at once. It’s something the kids remember for the rest of their lives, and it’s fantastic for us too. Over the winters we’d do school visits, and it was great to see the faces of these children light
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MANTAS of Zavora
In conversation with
NAKIA CULLAIN
(previous) Giant manta ray in Zavora Photo by Andrea Marshall
(left) Inside the Zavora Marine Lab Photo by Dr. Yara Tibiriçá
(below) Zavora coastline Photo by Zavora Scuba
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MANTAS OF ZAVORA
in conversation with NAKIA CULLAIN
JUMPING INTO THE DEEP END I learned to dive in Mozambique in 2010, on a volunteer
NAKIA CULLAIN IS THE MANAGER OF THE ZAVORA MARINE LAB, AN MMF MANTA RAY SCIENTIST, AND HAS JUST STARTED HER PHD ON MANTA ecology and research at Dalhousie University in Canada. I chatted to her from her base in Zavora, Mozambique, where she has lived for the past six years.
- Simon Pierce
project when I was still an undergraduate. The country stole my heart. A few years later, the founder of the Zavora Marine Lab, Dr. Yara Tibiriçá, now at the University of Cádiz in Spain, was looking for someone to take over her research station. Zavora is a remote fishing village located in the southern part of Mozambique, about an hour and a half drive south of Tofo, where MMF’s main office is located. I knew I really enjoyed the country, and it seemed like a cool opportunity, so I inquired. After chatting back and forth, Yara decided that I might be the right person to manage her little baby here, the Zavora Marine Lab. I came here, and I saw Zavora, and I fell in love; but I only had a couple of weeks for Yara to show me the ropes before she threw me to the wolves. There were quite a few projects for me to take over, so even organizing the data handover had to happen fast. It was a very steep learning curve, and it probably took me a year or two to really get on my feet, but over time I started developing my own ideas of what research questions I’d like to answer. It kind of snowballed from there, and I’ve been here for almost six years now!
MANTAS OF ZAVORA
FROM MICROFAUNA TO MEGAFAUNA I always thought of myself as a shark person. I traveled to South Africa to work with the white sharks, tag hammerheads, and things like that. I’d never seen a manta in the wild until I came here. Then, in the first week, I had a train of six mantas come through on the reef and hang out with me for 25 minutes. And that was that. Yara did her PhD on nudibranchs, so I inherited quite a few monitoring and species identification projects on that group; I definitely didn’t realize how much of a passion for nudi’s I had until I got here. I’m still keeping up with the nudibranch work, but I’ve shifted more into the megafauna. Yara was also cataloging manta rays, so I had a baseline database to work with, and I’ve been building on that to piece together the puzzle of the Zavora mantas. MANTAS OF ZAVORA
last 10-12 years too. They used to be seen in high numbers all year round. That has completely shifted in recent years; they’re still seen sporadically through the year, but there’s this huge seasonal pulse during our winter, between July and November. Through the year we either see just a few, or like 40–50 at a time, so there’s fairly extreme variation. The Tofo manta season used to be more summer-based, whereas it’s the opposite here. I’m starting to dive deeper into the older Zavora manta data now and, looking at the earlier years, there were a lot of manta sightings through the summer months. The change is just bizarre to me; I suspect that our season is also getting shorter and shorter now, which is also a bit scary. It has been July to November, then this year they didn’t show up till mid-September. I’m hoping they’ll stay for longer this season, but we’ll have to see. So now it’s maybe two months that we have them aggregating here, rather than four months. The
We’re lucky in that we see both manta ray species, and we
environment is changing. I’ve never seen any mantas feeding
can get really large numbers of reef mantas coming in to
here at all, so I’m not sure if it could be food availability; it
court, clean, and socialize. The Red Sands, or Witches Hat
can’t be due to diver pressure, because there’s hardly any
dive site is their favorite place to aggregate in Zavora, by far.
diving here. I just don’t know. When Yara was here she’d see a
It’s a really special place when the mantas show up, and that
handful of mantas get caught locally each year, but I’ve only
has very much sparked my interest in uncovering what they’re
seen two over the past six years. Of course, we don’t know
up to, and how their numbers are trending over time. MMF
what’s happening in commercial fisheries, so that’s something I
research has shown a decline in sightings around Tofo, so
want to look into going forward.
we want to know if those mantas have shifted down here, or whether it’s a separate sub-population.
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Zavora’s mantas have done some interesting things over the
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(left) Reef manta in Zavora
(below) Zavora coastline
Photo by Andrea Marshall
Photo by Zavora Scuba
Nakia (left) and Andrea Marshall processing manta samples. Photo by MMF
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In the first week, I had a train of six mantas come through on the reef and hang out with me for 25 minutes. And that was that.
(previous) Reef manta in Zavora (top) Zavora is an important habitat for humpback whales (below) Hawksbill turtle in Zavora Photo by Andrea Marshall
(right) Nakia prepping to dive Photo by Frida Skarfors
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MANTAS OF ZAVORA
The giant mantas are even more of a mystery. They’re much more transient, and we don’t see nearly as many giants as we do reef mantas. We only see low double digits of giant mantas visiting each year, compared to hundreds of reef mantas. The timing is similar, with a June-July peak, then we rarely see them through the rest of the year. Even over that period, we’ll have 20–30 reef mantas, and maybe 2–3 giants that come in at the same time. VOLUNTEER-POWERED RESEARCH Until last year, I was 100% reliant on Zavora Lodge, and their dive center – the only dive operation in the area – to get out on the water and get the research done. Sadly, they didn’t survive COVID, and they’ve closed down permanently. When that happened I went into a mild panic; what am I going to do? Fortunately, a very kind soul, who has a vacation home here, contacted me. He’d heard that the dive lodge had closed, and wanted to invest in this work. That’s helped me develop a startup dive center. It’s not fully operational yet, but it allows us to get back in the water. He saved my butt. With that in place, we’ve been diving again since the beginning of May. It’s definitely challenging to be so dependent on tourism, and to have such little resources, and being in a remote area of Mozambique makes things challenging in general. But I like it, I like a challenge. To help fund this work, I run expeditions in Zavora where people can join me in the field and support my research. Without them, I don’t have the funding to actually launch the boat and get out to sea. They come to get some field
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MANTAS OF ZAVORA Preparing to laser-measure a manta ray Photo by Andrea Marshall
experience, to learn about the research work we’re doing
two acoustic receivers down now, one at the mantas’ favorite
here, and of course they also get to have some amazing dives
shallow site, and another on a deeper reef. We definitely
with manta rays and other cool species. It’s kind of a win-win
want to expand that array in the future. Hopefully, we can
for all of us. Despite COVID and everything, it’s been actually
start getting more tags out soon too, so we can start getting
quite busy this year. July and August have been good, and it’s
more information on their movements.
just starting to fizzle out now. It’ll just be me and a couple of other people left for the next couple of months.
I’m hoping that the work that I’m doing will help us avoid the declines that we’ve seen elsewhere. To keep them thriving in large numbers. I’m pretty optimistic that I can make a
THE PHD JOURNEY AHEAD
difference here.
I formally started my PhD at the start of September. I see my foreseeable future being spent here in Zavora, but for the PhD I do need to go to Canada for a semester, to get some stuff done and take some courses. It will be good to meet the team
Watch a sneak-peak of the conversation with Nakia!
there, and be active in the academic world, after living in the bush here in Africa for so long. I’m really excited and looking forward to the long road ahead. I’m still developing my PhD proposal, but I’ll be continuing the photo-ID work on the mantas, as well as measuring them and, eventually, once I receive my tags, tagging them. I’m very interested in tracking manta movements in relation to the industrial fishing fleet. We need baseline information on what these vessels are doing, where they’re spending most of their time, where most of the fishing effort is, and to see if that overlaps with the activity hotspots for mantas, whale sharks, and other threatened species. It might open up a whole other
Watch the full 30 min conversation in the MMF Member’s Area.
can of worms. It’ll be a good use of the satellite tags. There’s also been some acoustic tagging done previously, a few years ago, so we’ll be able to build on that. We’ve got
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O C E A N G I A N T S W I N T E R 2 0 21
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I’m hoping that the work that I’m doing will help us avoid the declines that we’ve seen elsewhere. To keep them thriving in large numbers. I’m pretty optimistic that I can make a difference here.
WHALE SHARKS
of Galapagos
In conversation with
SOFIA GREEN
(previous) Sofia placing a fin-mounted satellite tag Photo by Jenny Waack
The Galapagos Whale Shark Project team (2018), with Sofia on far left Photo by GWSP
(below) ‘Darwin’s Pillars’ and Darwin Island Photo by Jonathan Green
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in conversation with SOFIA GREEN
Over the past couple of years, I’ve also been doing my Master’s degree in Portugal. I used the data that we had from satellite tag deployments to look at the movements of whale
SOFIA GREEN IS A SCIENTIST WITHIN THE GALAPAGOS WHALE SHARK PROJECT, AND recently completed her MSc thesis on tracking whale sharks. I talked to her while she was back at home base in Quito, Ecuador, after another stint in the Galapagos Islands.
- Simon Pierce
sharks from the Galapagos and through the eastern tropical Pacific. I was analyzing where they spend their time, how deep they’re diving, and working out what influences their movements and diving behaviors. WHALE SHARKS IN THE GALAPAGOS Whale sharks are seen throughout the Galapagos archipelago, occasionally, but they’re most common up at Darwin and Wolf. They’re usually seen up there during the cool season in the Galapagos. The ocean up north is much warmer than around the central islands, where the water temperature is 17–21ºC, and the western islands where it’s even colder, often 12–18ºC at the surface. In the far north, the sharks get to stay at a comfortable temperature but they’re still close to the coldwater front, where there’s lots of food. That’s what they like, warm water and food.
ISLAND LIFE I’m from Quito, but my life has always been involved with the Galapagos. My parents both lived there and still work there. I grew up moving between Quito and the Galapagos. I decided to study marine biology, and I’ve been working as a researcher with the Galapagos Whale Shark Project since 2017. Each year, we’ve done annual research expeditions to the far northern islands, Darwin and Wolf, to study the whale sharks that swim past.
Darwin Island is one of the most beautiful, most spectacular dive sites in the world, but the conditions there can be tough, with strong currents and surge. During our research trips we spend a couple of weeks there, diving three times a day, and on each dive we wait for a whale shark to pass by so we can satellite tag them, take photo-identification images, or collect blood samples. To set the scene, we all dive down on scuba. Everyone positions themselves along a natural rock platform, so that as a team we’re spread out a bit. We’ll be sitting there, waiting
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for this giant fish to appear, rotating to do 360º scans of the area, then out of nowhere these giant sharks just appear in front of you. You’d think you’d see them approaching, but they just pop into view. It’s funny when it’s the last person in the chain that actually sees the shark, after it’s swum over everyone else’s head. When a person does spot a whale shark, they’ll frantically rattle their shaker and swim towards the shark, and everyone else jumps into action too – we all look around to see who’s shaking, then swim out in the same general direction, even though we often can’t see the shark at that stage. If there’s current, or the shark is further out, it’s often the last person in the chain that has time to actually get to the shark. They look so relaxed when they’re swimming, they seem so slow, but in reality, we have to swim so fast to intercept them that you’re watching your air go down on your pressure gauge as you’re approaching.
A whale shark cruises past the platform at Darwin Photo by Jonathan Green
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(left) Whale shark in a fish school at Wolf Island Photo by Jonathan Green
(below)Video of Jonathan Green attaching a fin-mounted satellite tag Photo & video by Simon Pierce
It makes the work a lot more exciting, for sure. We’re in the
sharks, will use whale sharks as a giant scratching post. One
middle of the ocean, the middle of nowhere really, holding
day we saw a whale shark with a fin-mount, tagged four days
onto a rock trying to spot bus-sized whale sharks, then do all
earlier, swim past the boat while we were having breakfast.
this crazy stuff. It’s wild when you think about it. I love it.
There were some silky sharks swimming along with her giving
The whale sharks we see in the Galapagos are 99% adult
themselves back-scratches. We saw the whale shark again on
females, which is the part of the population that is rarely seen
the next dive, and the tag was gone. So we still have issues
anywhere else in the world. It gives us a unique opportunity to
with other animals dislodging the tags, and some get crushed
study these individuals, which are essential if we want to protect
by depth due to the pressure, but we’re definitely getting
whale sharks. Adult females are the sharks that are already
better retention times and longer tracks, which is very nice in
reproducing, so they’re key to the conservation and recovery of
terms of understanding the sharks’ movements.
the species. They’re massive animals. The whale sharks we see
That does bring me to the other problem though. Whale
tend to be 10–12 meters long, and we’ve seen a few that might
sharks are incredible deep-divers, the deepest diving fish.
be 13–14 meters long. They’re very impressive!
When they dive past 1,700–1,800 m, the tag gets crushed. It’d be great to be able to measure exactly how deep they
TAGGING GIANT WHALE SHARKS The way we tag whale sharks has evolved over time. When I started with the project, in 2017, we were still using pressure guns to attach tow tags to the sharks using a little anchor dart under the skin. The tags were on this long tether, and the tag itself would float in the water slightly above the shark. The problem we had with the tow tags was low retention. We lost them very fast. Darwin is one of the sharkiest places in the ocean, and we believe that sharks and other fish, like giant trevally, were seeing this floating tag and thinking it was food. We’d tag a shark, check the attachment was strong, but then shortly afterward we’d see it again and the tag would already be gone. It was super frustrating, because these tags are expensive. That year, 2017, was also the first year we tried using finmount satellite tags. We’ve kept working on the best way to deploy them. The tags we’re using now are very slim, with a gentle clamp that holds the fin, and we attach them to the tip of the shark’s dorsal fin. They’re very hydrodynamic, and we get much longer retention times with them, so we’ve completely shifted away from tow tags now. We still get some tag loss – other sharks, like silky sharks and Galapagos
dive, and the Georgia Aquarium team has been developing a ‘deep tag’ that can withstand the pressure at extreme depth, but the sharks exceed the limits of the available technology right now. It’ll be a really interesting aspect of their behavior to study. From the tracks so far we can see that the sharks don’t necessarily spend much time at depth; they dive down, hit max depth, and immediately start coming up again. It’s often a stepwise movement, spending a bit of time at each depth as they move up. It might be part of their prey search strategy. The deep tags are the kind of technological advance we need to help answer this question. Now that we’re able to track the sharks for several months, we’re getting much more information on their movements away from the Galapagos. A lot of them are converging off Peru between December and February. It looks like it might be an important feeding area. One of the most interesting things I picked up from my thesis research was that the sharks were diving deep while they were in the northern Galapagos area, often past 1,000 m, but they stayed a lot shallower while they were off Peru, never diving past 300 m. They’re spending their time at the surface there, probably feeding. There are lots of plankton at the surface off Peru, so perhaps they don’t need to dive so deep to find food.
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WHALE SHARKS OF GALAPAGOS
RECRUITING THE DIVE COMMUNITY Satellite tags are great, but they stay on for months, not years. The project in Galapagos started a decade ago, and we’ve been collecting photo-identifications of the sharks as a tracking tool over that time. Some photos go back 13–14 years. The sharks do seem to move past Darwin Island quite fast, but we’re starting to get more re-sightings now, up to 12 years apart so far. It’s great to see that these sharks do return to Darwin. The photo-IDs can add to the tracks we start with the satellite tags, even if the sharks don’t come back for years. A lot of dive guides are collaborating with the project now, which is fantastic. Before, we’d only get IDs from the sharks we’d see on our expeditions. Now, we’re getting in many
It’s funny because people are often like, oh, you must be bored of whale shark photos. No way! For me, every single one of those whale sharks has a name. Every encounter with a whale shark is unique. Diving with guests, it’s fantastic to see somebody that’s dreamed of seeing a whale shark when they have their first experience. The excitement when they come out of the ocean, it’s just, oh my gosh, it moves me. I love it. I love being a part of that. I get it, too. Every time I see a whale shark, I’m still impressed. I don’t think it will ever become normal to me. TAGGING FOR CONSERVATION
more photos, and we’re up to almost 700 identified whale
We’ve recorded some fantastic tracks over the past few
sharks from the archipelago. That’s what is helping us to get
years, and they’re informing some great conservation
these re-sightings across years. I got super excited last week
initiatives, both in the Galapagos and internationally. Our
when there was a re-sighting of one of the first whale sharks
work has shown that the area around the Galapagos is
I ever say, from the trip we did together in 2017. That shark
really important to the species – it’s one of the only places
returned to Darwin in 2020, then again in 2021. Thanks to
where adult females are seen. There’s an initiative underway
the dive guides and their guests, we were able to see that this
to expand the Galapagos Marine Reserve, to help protect
shark has come back several times now.
sharks when they leave the Reserve. They’re well-protected
I’ve started working with a company called Galapagos
39
with the conservation of an endangered species.
when they’re inside that area, but there are a lot of human
Shark Diving, where I act as a trip leader and talk with the
threats once they leave. We have intense fishing pressure all
divers that join me about what’s going on in the Galapagos
around the Reserve, especially during the time of the year
Marine Reserve. People love the diving, and they want to
whale sharks are present, because it’s such a productive
understand more about the area, what the real problems are,
area. Giant fishing fleets are waiting to catch sharks when
and how they can personally make a difference. It’s nice to be
they leave the protected area.
able to do this kind of outreach, to meet more people, and to
We were sharing a track online of one particular whale
provide a trip that combines something as beautiful as diving
shark, Hope, as she moved away from the Galapagos and
O C E A N G I A N T S W I N T E R 2 0 21
Matching Galapagos whale shark images on sharkbook.ai (below) Diver (Viko) and adult female whale shark Photo by Simon Pierce
M A R I N E M E G A FA U N A . O R G
40
It’s so important to tell these sharks’ stories, because Hope’s story is representative of so many endangered species that lose their lives this way, every single day.
Hope’s last photo, just after she was tagged. Photo by Simon Pierce
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(left) Hope with her tag Photo by Simon Pierce
(below) Hope’s tracks between September 2019 and May 2020 superimposed over Global Fishing Watch data (fishing vessels in light blue) Data by Sofia Green
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Having a direct track connecting these two protected areas helps to show the importance of protecting that movement corridor, and turning it into a multinational protected area.
seemed to be looping back. Then, she suddenly stopped
Whale sharks are a great ambassador for other endangered
transmitting. We’ll never know for sure what happened, but
marine wildlife. I’m whale shark obsessed. It’s easy to love
the tag data suggested she was caught by a fishing vessel.
these creatures. But it’s nice to know that the work we’re
When we reported that, it was local news. Then, suddenly,
doing is not just to protect whale sharks, it’s to protect the
it seemed to catch people’s attention. There was this shark
oceans. It’s to protect the future of our own species.
that lots of people had been tracking on social media, they knew what she looked like from our photos, they knew her story. Then, she suddenly went dark, and it was like, boom, we’ve just lost this whale shark we cared about, that we had a connection to. It became international news, and China had
Watch a sneak-peak of the conversation with Sofia!
to recall some of their fishing fleet. It was a huge deal. It’s so important to tell these sharks’ stories, because Hope’s story is representative of so many endangered species that lose their lives this way, every single day. She wasn’t just representing herself, she was representing all of them. So the idea is to expand the marine protected area around the Galapagos to give these animals a chance. We also had one whale shark that moved from Darwin Island to Cocos Island, off Costa Rica, last year. We already knew that the area between these islands, both World Heritage Areas, was an important swimway for other sharks, sea turtles, and marine mammals. Having a direct track connecting these two protected areas helps to show the importance of protecting that movement corridor, and turning it into a multinational protected area. It would protect the
Watch the full 25 min conversation in the MMF Member’s Area.
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whale sharks, but also all these other species.
M A R I N E M E G A FA U N A . O R G
44
10% of profit from the whale
shark collection is donated to the
Marine Megafauna Foundation
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MMF collaborator, Stella Diamant, wearing Waterlust’s Whale Shark Warrior Leggings. Madagascar
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