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Ahmedabad: After an awareness campaign to save the whale sharks along the Gujarat coastline, Wildlife Trust of India (WTI), Gujarat forest department and Tata Chemicals have decided to do a study on their habitat, based on a technology used by NASA.
Dhiren Joshi of WTI, which is partnering the project, said, "Indian scientists will try to distinguish individual whale shark off the Gujarat coast, using a technique employed by NASA to identify galaxies. The software will identify whale shark through unique patterns of spots from the point of numerous triangles on their bodies."
As a whale shark grows, the distance between these spots increases, but angles of these triangles remain the same, thus identifying the shark. "This initiative is part of a study to |
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understand the migratory breeding and habitat of these fishes for future conservation measures," says Joshi.
As a part of the programme, documenting pictures of rescue operations along with DNA analysis of the shark will also be done. "The DNA samples will be put in world forum for people to identify if the same shark was spotted in their respective area. This will help to study the migratory pattern. Those sharks caught in the nets will also be tagged. A satellite tagging system will be used which will help
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scientists and experts keep track of shark movement," he added.
According to Joshi, past records show that whale sharks aggregate in larger numbers off Gujarat than off any other state in India. The main concentration of these sharks is in Veraval and Sutrapada and the area is about 20 km along the coast. Water samples of this area will be collected and studied for a habitat study.
Officials from forest department said, "Satellite images will make it clear whether there are sizeable number of sharks along the Gujarat coast compared to any other maritime state. This could be the reason for such frequent sightings." Underwater pictures of whale sharks will be stored in a global database managed by an Australian NGO Ecocean which is headed by Bard Norman, a whale shark expert.
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