Injury Surveys

Unfortunately the whale sharks encountered in the Maldives often show signs of collisions with hulls and propellers, entanglement in fishing nets and, in a few cases fishing attempts.

In order to understand how human activities may directly affect the whale sharks it is important that the MWSRP, like other research teams around the world, record any evidence of injuries in a standardised way allowing us to measure the extent to which whale sharks are injured in the Maldives compared to those found at other aggregation sites.

In some regions of the world whale sharks are frequently seen with scars from predatory bites, this is especially prevalent in Australia where there are large numbers of other shark species large enough to consider attacking their giant cousins. However, it is exceptionally rare in the Maldives as there are very few large predators, the waters are too warm for the great white shark.

The first step of this study is to categorise the injuries based on the cause and severity. This way we are able work out what are most common injuries. Then we can work which injuries ca nbe recovered from and how quickly. This will also shedsome light on how many whale sharks die from their injuries. This is something that is hard to find out because whale sharks have relatively small fat reserves when compared to cetaceans and corpses sink rapidly meaning fatal incidents often go unnoticed and unrecorded.