Beached whale sharks

[wahlaoeh]

My friend from South Africa, Mark uploaded some sad images of two beached whale sharks at Pumula Point. Sources confirmed that KZN Sharks board had measured, photographed and then cut off the dorsal fins.

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The above article quoted that 10 whale sharks a year are found beached. Is whale shark beaching common in other parts of the World?

Why would KZN Sharks board cut off only the dorsal fins and not the gill's area? Isn't the gill's area used for identification?

RIP whale sharks ...

 

[LIVES4SHARKS]

They only need to take a picture of the spot pattern on the left side area behind the gill slits for identification purposes. I emailed Marie Levine of the SRI to get more information on this.

Carolyn:shark2:

 

[wahlaoeh]

They only need to take a picture of the spot pattern on the left side area behind the gill slits for identification purposes. I emailed Marie Levine of the SRI to get more information on this.

Carolyn:shark2:

Thanks Carolyn. Here is the article.
Beached Whale Sharks

 

[LIVES4SHARKS]

Here is the response from Marie Levine:

Hi Carolyn,

Whale sharks regularly beach along the South African/Mozambique coast. I only dissected one of the stranded sharks and it didn't appear healthy, but most of the sharks that strand there do so by accident. In that area, the whale sharks often travel very close to shore, just behind the backline of breakers. The undersea topography consists of long fingers of rock jutting out from the shore and occasionally a whale shark is moving so close to shore that when the tide goes out he/she becomes trapped.

I don't know what happened to the particular shark you mentioned, but a few years back our director wrote a paper on whale shark strandings in South Africa. I will see what I can find out for you.

Knowing the Natal Sharks Board, they will probably use the fins in their display. They used to sell the fins of sharks that died in their nets to exporters, but whale sharks are CITES Appendix II animals so their fins cannot be legally exported.

Warmly,
Marie

I will forward any more information that she sends me on this topic.

Carolyn:shark2:

 

[LIVES4SHARKS]

Here is some more detailed information that I received today from Marie.

Hi Carolyn,

That is an area where whale sharks strand regularly.

It was actually because of a number of whale sharks that stranded near Cape Vidal, Leven Point, and Sodwana that our whale shark tagging study began back in 1993.

A team of researchers from Shark Research Institute-South Africa dissected the stranded sharks. The found the safest area to implant a tag anchor on whale sharks, and the optimum depth to implant it in order to cause no harm to the sharks. Back then, because no tags & tag anchors were commercially available for such a large fish, SRI-SA developed and manufactured their own, and used specially-modified spearguns to implant the tags. Our tag and tag-anchor designs have evolved over the years, but not our method of implanting tags.

In 1994, we began a 5-year aerial survey of whale sharks along the SA and Southern Mozambique coast which documented the drastic decline in whale sharks. Data from that aerial survey proved critical in winning protection for whale sharks at CITES in 2002.

So, some good came from the 1992/1993 whale shark strandings, but one important finding was ignored. Beef is condemned as unfit for human consumption if it contains 8 ppm of lead. Tissue samples from one of the stranded sharks were sent to 3 different labs and found to contain in excess of 100 ppm of lead. Both the SA and US authorities were contacted (EPA, DEP, FDA, etc) but all said it was not their problem for a variety of reasons. To this day, local people in Mozambique consume the stranded or accidentally-caught whale sharks.

Warmly,
Marie

I hope that helps you to understand what is happening with the sharks in that part of the world. It is sad to see that happen. It is always sad to see it with whales too.

Carolyn:shark2:

 

[LRobbins]

I didn't realize that whale sharks could get stranded, but of course it makes sense, tragic as it is.