A whale shark's free feed
Use of radio tagging captures stunning behaviour of world's largest fishUnderwater video of an adolescent male whale shark creatively sucking fish out of a fishing net in Indonesia's Cendrawasih Bay National Marine Park is quickly becoming an online sensation, following its recording and posting on the Conservation International blog and YouTube channel (see below).
Video of this unique behavior whereby the whale sharks of Cenderawasih Bay have learned to literally suck fish out of the fishermen's nets was captured by the expedition team and has been viewed more than one million times on YouTube, in the past two weeks.
Last month, the Cendrawasih Bay National Park Authority along with experts from conservation groupls recently completed the first expedition to tag whale sharks with radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags in Cenderwasih Bay. ,
Widely used in the U.S. for tracking pets, these tiny pill-sized transmitters are injected beneath the skin and serve as a unique, permanent ID card which can be scanned with a receiver wand. It will allow scientists to determine a shark’s history whenever it's next encountered.
"This technology has never been tried before with whale sharks, in large part because it's fairly impractical to swim after the giants with a receiver wand underwater," said Dr. Mark Erdmann, a marine biologist who was on the expedition. "What makes this tagging possible in Cenderwasih Bay is the unique habit this population has of aggregating at fishing platforms to feast upon the small silverside baitfish that the fishers are catching."
"These massive fish can grow to nearly 50ft in length," said Dr. Greg Stone, chief scientist for oceans at Conservation International. "In order to support that massive body, they have to consume tons of plankton or small fish a day. The behavior developed by the sharks in Cenderwasih Bay is a novel a behavioral adaptation to meeting that mark," Dr Stone added.
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