Between the months of April and May, the whale shark arrives at the Pacific coast of Colombia to feed. His passage has prompted an enormous effort to investigate and conserve it.
Photo: Juan Camilo Mora (@jcmoraphotography)
When biologist Melany Villate began telling the inhabitants of Bahía Solano, in the Colombian Pacific, that she wanted to find the whale shark (Rhincodon typus), everyone looked at her like a weirdo. They, mostly artisanal fishermen, were terrified at the mere thought that they might encounter it in their fishing activities. Hernando Hurtado, better known in the area as Capi Nando, says that, like him, “we natives, raised in front of the sea, grew up watching our ancestors thinking that we could eat them.” Why would anyone want to go into the water to look for it now? they wondered.
But Villate, today scientific director of the MarAdentro Foundation, had a lifelong fascination with these animals. Her degree work in Biology was done with international scientific data on these animals. In her master’s degree in Evolutionary Ecology and Systematics she learned to use genetic tools to do conservation, and in her doctorate, which she completed at the University of Munich (Germany), she used those tools in shark conservation genetics in the Colombian Pacific.
He was doing his doctoral field work in 2016 when he learned that along these coasts, where he had already genetically identified 14 species of sharks, one was arriving that he had always dreamed of seeing. The largest fish in the ocean: the whale shark. Until then, the only people who knew that this animal, which can reach the size of a bus (more than 18 meters), came very close to the coast, were the locals. Neither science nor environmental authorities had it on their radar so close to the continent.
Photo: Whale shark feeding on gill sardine in the Colombian Pacific. / Juan Camilo Mora (@jcmoraphotography)
“Seeing it for the first time in its natural environment, in Colombia, divided my life in two. From then on I knew what I was going to do. “He showed me what I wanted to do with the rest of my life,” she says. And from Germany she landed in Bahía Solano, where she now lives. With MarAdentro, his foundation, he began doing scientific research on this species since 2021. And today, together with the local tourism agency Bahía Solano Me Llama, captains, artisanal fishermen and the community have carried out the first project to genetically identify, study and conserve whale sharks on the Pacific coast of Colombia.
“After confirming that they were here, many other questions arose. Who’s coming? Where do they come from? To where they go? What are they coming for? Will this area be important? “What does Colombia imply in its long migration throughout the Pacific,” she assures. For Captain Nando, the combination of everyone’s knowledge and experiences, including his developed eye to find them from the boats, has been the first step to begin to solve them. “Today I feel very lucky that these animals choose our warm waters. Thanks to this work we have learned that they are totally harmless,” he says.
A unique project to conserve the whale shark
MarAdentro researchers have developed abilities very similar to those of marine mammals. They can dive several meters, holding their breath while flapping their wings with full force, to do various scientific tasks. They measure the shark, pass under it to identify if it is female or male, take a photo of the spots on its left side (unique constellations, similar to our fingerprint) and use an instrument similar to a harpoon (but harmless) to remove it. a small sample of skin, from which they can extract the genetic material, key to solving several questions.
Photo: Melany Villate, scientific director of MarAdentro, takes a DNA sample from a whale shark. / Juan Camilo Mora (@jcmoraphotography)
The truth is that we still know very little about the whale shark in the world. We know that, despite their enormous size, they feed on tiny animals, such as plankton, filtering water through their gills. They usually meet to eat and, almost always, are aggregations of juvenile males. And they can reach up to two thousand meters deep, but we have no idea what they do there. In Colombia, for example, they come to feast on gill sardines, fish only a few centimeters long.
There are other great mysteries. We do not know where they reproduce, where their offspring are born, how many they have or what their gestation period is. We are still not clear how many years they live and whether those who come here are residents or migrate from other places. Research from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute documented that Anne, a female whale shark, migrated more than 20,000 kilometers from Coiba National Park in Panama to the Mariana Trench near Australia. Her journey took two and a half years. “The possibilities are endless,” says Villate.
MarAdentro’s work has been key to generating what scientists call the “baseline” in Colombia. The catalog of “footprints” in photos allows them to compare with other organizations if the sharks share other areas. Genetic data allows us to see what other populations in the world they are similar to, who they might be related to, or who they might be reproducing with.
And this year was particularly successful. Since they began the scientific work, they have identified at least 50 whale sharks. More than half (about 30) were sampled this season, during April and May. And although they are still organizing the genetic material, reviewing photos and transcribing data, with them – says Villate – they hope to “nurture the global data, which is still very scarce” and add pieces to put together the enormous puzzle of this species.
“We have found sharks of various sizes. Some very small, two and a half meters, and others up to 10 meters. This allows us to understand that this site is more than just a feeding point, it can also be part of their breeding process,” he explains.
A tourism that cannot be massive
For some years now, tourism and whale shark watching began to become popular around the world. In places like Oslob, in the Philippines, these animals have become the main attraction. The largest observation operation for this species in the world is located there. But mass tourism is also generating serious pressures that, added to threats such as collisions with boats, pollution, fishing and entanglements, today have this animal in danger of extinction.
To Oslob, for example, sharks do not arrive naturally, but are attracted with food. Dozens of tourists scream, fall with them, touch them and chase them. It’s not the only place where it happens. In Colombia, until 10 days ago, we did not have an official protocol to sight the whale shark responsibly.
MarAdentro had managed to disseminate, with the support of the community, some guidelines so that tourists and operators could see them without altering their dynamics. From the airport to the bakeries, fishmongers and neighborhood stores they had posters hanging with information about the importance of the species and the precautions to take when spotting them. On May 30, thanks to this previous work, the environmental authority of Chocó (Codechocó) issued the first resolution in Colombia to sight the whale shark.
As Kary Sánchez, Marine-coastal deputy director of Codechocó, explains, “the main objective is to reduce the drivers of biodiversity loss through the application of responsible sighting measures with a view to strengthening nature tourism.”
The document, which you accessed The viewer, establishes several rules: there can only be one boat for each whale shark. Only five people can enter the water at a time with the shark and all, without exception, must wear a vest. Boats must be at least 10 meters away from whale sharks and those in the water must maintain a distance of at least two meters from their heads and three meters from their tails (document available at the end of the note). .
Villate hopes that this area of the Colombian Pacific “can be a sanctuary for them. A conservation site for an animal that we are only now beginning to get to know. Where they can feed peacefully, something that does not happen in other places.” But achieving it is only possible, he insists, if from the beginning the communities are linked, they socialize and the protocols are agreed upon. Otherwise, like others, they may remain only on paper.
