A satellite tag has shown that “Moby,” a 15-foot male, has one of the deepest recorded dives of any whale shark at nearly 6,000 feet — more than a mile beneath the water’s surface. Other notable findings include:

• These whale sharks (tagged in West Papua, Indonesia) are not as migratory as many believed. They disperse periodically in different directions, covering distances up to 1,000 miles, often to return to ‘home waters’ in a matter of weeks.
• They are very individualistic, going their own ways for reasons unknown. We’ve tracked two males of similar ages with utterly different migration habits, one largely staying put since we mounted his tag, while the other has ventured into the western Pacific.
• The tagging site where whale sharks feed is only a few hundred feet deep, but when they travel farther afield, they dive remarkably deep.
  
  Read more on CI’s blog, Human Nature.

Conservation International collaborated with Georgia Aquarium to carry out health exams and blood draws on 20 wild whale sharks to provide baseline health and ensure animal welfare during our tagging research. The results have indicated that tagging does not cause additional stress to these whale sharks.

Combining the aquarium’s expertise on whale shark care with CI’s experience on the ground in West Papua, we are working together to ensure that whale shark tourism — a growing and lucrative industry — is managed sustainably and doesn’t adversely impact the animals’ health.

In the spirit of Shark Week 2016, we asked our online community to name whale sharks #144883 and #144884. After receiving nearly 800 submissions, we tallied the votes and found two clear winners that will now be used by the CI scientists studying these majestic creatures.

See the winners

Conservation International recently launched a school program in Singapore in which students can adopt individual whale sharks and use this tool to track their progress daily, enabling them to learn about whale shark behavior and the ecosystem on which this species relies. The program aims to encourage greater awareness of the importance of healthy marine ecosystems and humans’ effect on them.

These sharks are tagged in the waters of the Bird’s Head Seascape in West Papua, Indonesia — an area that is home to a wider array of marine creatures than anywhere else in the world. These waters, spanning an area the size of Great Britain, boast 75 percent of all the world’s coral species and more than 1,700 species of fish. This rich biodiversity increases the area’s resilience to stressors such as climate change, potentially offering clues for how coral reefs can adapt to warming seas.

Learn more about the Bird’s Head Seascape