International Whale Shark Day: Saving the gentle giants of the sea along the Indian coast

Conservation efforts to protect endangered whale sharks in India face challenges, requiring community engagement and stricter enforcement of laws.

It was a sunny morning on July 25 at Gilakaladindi, a coastal village in the East Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh, when a group of fishermen found a massive fish caught in their nets. The catch was a whale shark. Few days later, a similar incident occurred at the same place.

The whale shark (Rhincodon typus) is the world’s largest known fish species. Not a whale but a species of shark, it is included in Schedule I of the Wildlife Protection Act of India, 1972, which renders the capture and killing of the fish a cognisable offence. “It’s akin to killing a tiger,” says P Sathiyaselvam, conservation biologist of Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS). Listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), whale sharks have been hunted for years for its fin and liver for commercial trade, while oil from the fish was used for water-proofing wooden boats. International trading of its parts is banned under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species and the Wildlife Protection Act of India.

“Unregulated and unsustainable fishing practices to meet international demand for shark fins, liver oil, skin and meat, accidental entanglement in trawl and set nets, collision with boats as well as extensive coastal pollution have been attributed as major threats to the species,” adds Sathiyaselvam.

Since the mid-1980s, whale sharks became a regular fishery for their liver. In the 2000s, alarming incidences of slaughter of this species was reported from the Gujarat coast. This was captured in the award-winning film Shores of Silence: Whale Sharks in India by Mike Pandey, which eventually brought about major legislative changes to protect whale sharks worldwide.

At that time, the Wildlife Trust of India launched a massive campaign to bring about conservation awareness to fishers in Junagadh and, later, expanded it to Gir Somnath, Porbandar and Dwarka in Gujarat. The project had a considerable impact with workshops conducted in villages and street plays enacted to convey the consequences of hunting whale sharks. Since then, over 800 sharks have been released by the fishermen of Gujarat.

Despite conservation efforts, the whale sharks continue to face challenges primarily due to bycatch and accidental capture in fishing nets, illegal hunting and habitat degradation. A global study indicates that over the past 75 years, the world’s whale shark population has decreased by 50%.

On the East Coast, the Kakinada coast in Andhra Pradesh is one of the major landing zones for whale sharks. Fishermen here often encounter these gentle giants in their nets, leading to accidental deaths. The lack of awareness and the potential economic losses associated with releasing these sharks only exacerbate the issue. Whale sharks are at times encircled in purse seine nets. “This net is a major culprit in Visakhapatnam coast. Over the past couple of years, the reports of whale shark stranding and landing have also increased along the coast,” says Sri Chakra Pranav, a marine biologist and co-founder of the East Coast Conservation Team, a non-profit working on wildlife conservation on the East Coast of India.