Sabah Varsity Students Helping To Track Whale Sharks During Mco

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A whale shark first identified by the Universiti Malaysia Sabah team at Gaya Island, Kota Kinabalu, on March 13. Such whale sharks have distinctive identifying patterns.KOTA KINABALU: The movement control order (MCO) has not stopped marine biology students at Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) from carrying out research on whale sharks
The students are using photos and videos posted by divers on social media, including those recorded during previous holiday excursions, to build a database of whale shark sightings in Malaysia
“It has been an interesting start to the project,” said Dr Mabel Manjaji Matsumoto, the interim head at UMS’ Endangered Marine Species Research Unit, Borneo Marine Research Institute
“The lockdown has obviously affected our capacity to carry out some projects, but has also provided us with unique opportunities to gather citizen science data on social media like this
“So far, four individual whale sharks have been identified during this MCO,” she said in a statement here today
The travel restrictions, brought on by Covid-19, have left the students unable to travel to survey sites such as Pulau Gaya, she said, where they had recorded and identified their first official whale shark for the project
This was during a survey on March 13, just five days before the MCO was declared
Matsumoto said the students are reviewing social media posts to tag footage of whale sharks and upload photos and videos to Wildbook — the online library for global whale shark sightings
The students have been using computer software to identify individual whale sharks through markings unique to each animal
For whale sharks, the spot pattern on their bodies is different for each shark, essentially making it a sort of a fingerprint
When the date, time and location of a sighting is uploaded, it enables researchers to track movements of individual animals. Such a simple step becomes a powerful tool to do population and migratory studies
“We are asking divers and snorkellers with footage of whale sharks to tag our project on their social media posts to make it easier for us to find them
“Simply adding @Malaysia Whale Sharks will enable much easier identification. They can also upload the footage directly onto Wildbook,” Matsumoto said
Divers’ holiday photos and videos have already yielded remarkable insights into the behaviour and biology of megafauna
One such example is a whale shark sighted at Pulau Sipadan in October 2019
Footage provided by a diver enabled identification of this individual shark, which was found to have travelled from the Philippines. This became the first documented case of a whale shark moving between the waters of the Philippines and Malaysia
“These results highlight the importance of information from divers in monitoring programmes. They should not be underestimated, – especially for species such as the whale sharks,” said Gonzalo Araujo, an associate research fellow of the Endangered Marine Research Unit
“We suspected for a while that there was a link between whale shark populations in the Philippines and Sabah. Now, we have confirmation that this is true and is the starting point for more research on the topic.”He said old footage is also valuable as it could give a spatial reference for individual animals, as well as the potential history of their movements
A local conservation organisation, Sea Education Awareness Sabah (SEAS), has been assisting the project by going back through old footage and tagging the Malaysia Whale Shark project
SEAS conservation manager David McCann said the lockdown had enabled them to sieve through old footages on social media
“We had a huge backlog, with thousands of dives at sites in the Semporna region, including Sipadan, Mabul, Kapalai and the islands at the Tun Sakaran Marine Park. We also went through footage taken in Kota Belud
“It brought back many fond memories of how incredible Sabah is as a diving destination,” he said
An update on this work will be provided at the Sabah Shark and Ray Forum to be held next year. - FMT

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