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Faces of FADs: Whale Shark

by Campaign for Eco-Safe Tuna
August 5, 2013

Our Faces of FADs series introduces you to the marine species most often injured or killed by fish aggregating devices (FADs) commonly used in unregulated commercial fishing.

Our next Face of FADs is the whale shark, one of the largest species to be regularly targeted and killed by FAD fishermen. The whale shark's gentle personality and vegetarian diet make it a popular target for unscrupulous fishing fleets that troll for tuna in vast areas of unregulated ocean."

Victim II: Whale Shark

Type: Fish

Diet: Carnivore (plankton, macro-algae, krill, red crab larvae)

Average life span in the wild: 70 to 100 years

Size: 18 to 32.8 ft (5.5 to 10 m)

Weight: 20.6 tons (18.7 tonnes)

Conservation Status: Vulnerable

Interesting Fact: Despite their unrivaled size, whale sharks are docile in nature and sometimes allow swimmers to hitch a ride.

Profile: Whale sharks sport bodies that can grow to over 20 feet long with mouths that can reach five feet wide, making them the world’s largest fish. As a filter-feeder, the whale shark consumes food by jutting out its jaws and sifting the water that passes through their mouths for plankton and other tiny organisms. Generally found in tropical and warm oceans, whale sharks are migratory creatures capable of diving to depths of over 1,250 meters.

Threat from FADs: Although the whale shark is known for its hospitality to human swimmers, the species also attracts schools of tuna and other fish that gravitate toward its under-body. Some tuna fisheries, however, exploit the whale shark’s unsuspecting nature by attaching radio tracking devices to their bodies and luring them into nets as tuna congregate beneath them. The fishermen then reel in tuna and whale shark alike, with little regard for the whale shark’s ability to survive this stressful and dangerous procedure. If the whale shark does survive, the tracking device is re-attached to its body and the catch-release cycle is repeated, often until the whale shark dies of exhaustion or injury. A whale shark can only endure this a few times before it succumbs to this brutal procedure.

A study of shark bycatch numbers from tuna fisheries in the Western and Central Pacific indicated that in 2010, 8.39 metric tons of whale sharks were caught as bycatch in the European Union alone. A 2011 report released by The Pew Environment Group found shark mortalities from bycatch fishing in the hundreds of thousands in a single year; the report also noted that this figure could be significantly higher given that bycatch reporting was voluntary. While several countries have adopted policies to protect whale sharks, the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources still charges the unregulated practices of fisheries as a leading cause of declining whale shark populations. Coupled with other threats from the shark fin, mega-aquarium and liver oil industries, the whale shark’s vulnerability continues to grow exponentially.