Last August 2019, 104 new whale shark individuals have been identified in Ticao Pass off the coast of Donsol, in the Philippines, between January and June 2019, according to a report from the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF) Philippines.
Whale shark (Rhincodon typus), classified as Endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) on their Red List of Threatened Species, is a filter-feeding carpet shark and the largest living fish species in the world. Each whale shark can be identified based on the unique pattern of spots behind its gills, which serves as a “fingerprint” for identification.
Just as no two human fingerprints are alike, no two whale sharks have the same spot pattern. The addition of these new sightings puts the total number of whale shark individuals spotted in Donsol at 676 since the monitoring began in 2007. This represents nearly 40% of all the 1,724 whale sharks identified in the Philippines. The number of individuals spotted in 2019 is also the largest in several years, with only 22 new individuals spotted in Donsol between 2017 and 2018 by comparison.
The whale sharks were sighted during this year’s photo identification activities conducted by WWF-Philippines. In the first half of this year, 168 individuals – with 64 re-sightings alongside the 104 newly identified ones – were noted. Very young whale shark juveniles were also identified among the 168 individuals that were spotted. Their presence suggests that the Ticao Pass may be a pupping ground for whale sharks, further increasing the ecological significance of the area.
