Tag News
6th September 2009
The Maldives Whale Shark Research Programme has heard from and collected data from 9 of the 10 pop-up satellite tags that were attached in April/May 2009. The 10th tag is on Victor who was seen at Baa Atoll last month....Victor's tag is due to release in late September 2009, but the team plans to remove it if it is seen later this month. One of the sat tags was recovered by locals in Meemu Atoll, in June, and was eventually returned to the team. It recorded some very fine, short term, detailed data on diving. Another tag is awaiting us at Dhigurah (which was recovered by friends when it washed up on a nearby beach) and it should have some good detailed data in it too.
The team recovered 7 of 10 of the archival tags that were deployed in April/May 2009. Three sharks may still have tags (Joey, Paul, Andy) so the aim is to recover these in Baa Atoll later this month. They should contain some good data by now.