World's biggest fish gets a black-box flight recorder

from Inventors and Remarkable People (106 articles)

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The whale shark is the world's biggest living fish Photo Credit: Rolex Awards / Kurt Amsler

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“Key to the issue,” he says, “is the detail of where the badgers forage and where they scent mark, and Rory Wilson’s amazing invention reveals both. This information will not only help us understand the evolution of the badgers’ mysterious social life, but will also be relevant to public health officials who need to understand their role in the transmission of bovine tuberculosis in cattle. The data we will gather in collaboration with Rory Wilson will therefore be not only interesting, but also practically useful.”

Wilson hopes his device will unlock many of the secrets of animal behaviour. Not only will it help save animals facing extinction now, it will also provide valuable data on many species almost certain to be threatened in the future. The beneficiaries of his project are, he says, “the unthinkable number of animals that need to be properly understood now, tomorrow and in 20 years’ time.”

Initial trials on whale sharks at Ningaloo were staged in 2007 to see if the device could be delivered by a diver and would stay in place long enough to collect useful data about the giant fish’s still largely mysterious habits – where it feeds, breeds and goes when it is out of sight of humans in the deep oceans. They were successful, and the team now hopes to start collecting real data on whale shark behaviour in 2008, says Brad Norman.

He and Wilson met for the first time at the Rolex Awards ceremony in Singapore in October 2006 when they were individually honoured for their inspirational projects to study and protect the planet’s wildlife. Both being interested in finding ways to monitor wild animals, they hit it off immediately and vowed to work together.

Brad’s research uses a breakthrough photo analysis technique that he developed with a computer engineer and an astronomer linked to NASA, based on the unique pattern of white spots on the hide of every whale shark. A photograph of these spots acts as a visual ‘tag’ that allows scientists to recognize, record and track each individual. This innovative approach of automating the analysis of pattern data utilizing a technique for mapping star patterns also promises to open up a new world in animal studies. Brad says he has already received interest from researchers working with more than 30 other species, including manta rays, whales, dolphins, turtles, African wild dogs, lions and cheetahs.

To take his technique worldwide, Brad founded ECOCEAN, a not-for-profit conservation group that manages an extensive photo-identification database on the Internet (see www.whaleshark.org). In an innovative way to engage the global community, he is encouraging divers and tourists across the world as ‘citizen scientists’ to submit their dive photos of whale sharks to the database. Some 12,000 photographs of whale sharks from 38 countries have so far been added to the database, revealing 1150 individual whale sharks to date. At the same time the project has raised global awareness of an animal rates by the Each new image helps compile a global map of where whale sharks live and their migratory patterns. Contributors receive notice by email of all past and further sightings of ‘their’ shark. Together, the images are helping to build a global picture of the abundance, health, range and fluctuations of the whale shark population. “Just about anyone with a disposable underwater camera can now play a part in helping to conserve whale sharks, and so help to monitor the health of the oceans,” Norman explains. “It gives people a direct stake in whale shark stewardship.”

With the Rolex Award money, Brad Norman is devoting two years full-time to his project, training local authorities, tourism operators and 20 research assistants around the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans to observe, record and protect whale sharks.

Among his great successes was helping to convince the governments of India, the Philippines and recently Taiwan to officially end the slaughter of whale sharks. The Taiwan ban comes into full force this year (2008). As a result of lobbying by Brad and others, no government in the world now actively sanctions the hunting of the giant fish – though local fishermen still prey on it.

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