Who Cares For Moby Dick?

SAILING from Mombassa to Porbander as a 10-year-old boy, wildlife film-maker Mike Pandey was captivated by the sight of mysterious gigantic creatures that swum alongside his ship. Forty years later, shooting for a film on coastal India in Bhavnagar, Gujarat, in ’96, Pandey was haunted by their memory. He stopped fishermen all along the coast, but no one seemed to know or want to volunteer anything about the badiachhli that had once swum in these warm waters. Finally, a boat - builder guided him to Veraval harbour. Whale sharks— the gigantic re a t u res of Pandey’s boyhood imagination— were there. Only now they no longer frolicked in the open seas, but lay beached and severed all along the shore. Hunted in alarmingly large numbers— sometimes four to five a day; going up to a thousand in one season!

Feared for centuries as mysterious monsters, whale sharks— which can grow up to an incredible 60 ft in length, weigh an average of 12,000 kg, and have a mouth five feet wide— could well be some-thing out of Moby Dick. Except that despite its awesome size, the whale shark has none of the evil genius of Herman Melville’s legendary whale. Among the most benign and docile cre a t u res of the deep, they’ve never been known to attack; and are more akin in nature to the dolphin than either to the whale or the shark. Paradoxically called the whale shark, it belongs to neither category (see box) .

Very little is known about the whale shark, even today. Usually sighted between May and June, in the warm tropical waters around Australia, Southeast Asia, Africa and India, whale sharks are migratory,  but as their migratory paths are not charted, their geographical presence is highly unpredictable. One specimen, tagged by satel-lite, travelled 14,000 miles in 40 months! Sightings in fact are so a re that in ’87, when Fay Wolfson, renowned shark specialist at the Hubbs Marine Research Institute, San Diego, tried to collate all whale shark sightings re p o rted worldwide, she could find only 320!Interestingly, neither she nor Eugene W. Gudger, pioneering whale shark scientist, ever saw a live whale shark in the open seas in their lifetime. In India too, according to a document brought out by the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute (C M F R I) at Kochi, since the 1900s there ’s rarely been known o c c u rrence of more than one whale shark in the coastal waters of India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

The (sudden?) regular presence of whale shark in large numbers along India’s west coast then seems to be unique, unusual and cause for great excitement. In this context, the hunting of these magnificent cre a t u res along the Saurashtra coast from Veraval to Okha, disturbed Pandey and his team, Shibani Chaudhury and Rita Banerji deeply. They decided to document these sharks— even the presence of which most Indians, including marine specialists, are still unaware of. Going back every season for three years, they’ve been tracking the fate of these sharks on film, trying to understand and expose the potential ecological disaster building up along the Saurashtra coast.

"The whale shark is one of the most unique creatures of the sea and is still a mystery to man," says Pandey. "It’s neither a whale nor a shark. There ’s much that science needs to find out about it— what role it plays in our lives and in the ocean; what vital link might snap if it disappears. When the world is declaring it a protect especies, why this senseless killing along the Indian coast?"

Ironically, it ’s the movement towards conservation elsewhere in the world that’s triggered off whale shark hunting in India. Traditally, whale sharks were revered as good omens as their presenc heralds shoals of tuna and sardines. In fact until the early ’90s, the whale shark was rarely hunted except in Southeast Asia where its meat was eaten. In India, hunting was neither common nor lucrative. In ’80, for instance, re p o rts on six whale sharks caught along the Dakshina Kannada coast revealed that the sharks were sold off an astoundingly low price of Rs 300 each, especially as the cost curred in processing the fish was about Rs 200, not to mention the danger inherent in harpooning leviathans of that size from small mechanised boats! The few sharks hunted every season were mostly by the Bidiya community in Gujarat which used the liver oil water proof their boats, and sometimes sold the oil to shoe polish manufacturers for as little as Rs 20 for 16 litres! The soft white meat, however, was considered unfit for consumption and the car casses were invariably towed back and dumped in the sea.

BUT a round ’93, there was a dramatic turn a round. As global awareness grew and numbers were seen to dip, hunting was banned in the Maldivian waters, the Philippines, Taiwan and Kenya. The markets for fin soup and shark meat in the Southeast remained, but supplies dried up. Fish exporters in India were quick spot the opport u n i t y. An exporter in Veraval, who’d rather not named, admits he was instrumental in creating the whale shark ‘boom’. "I saw thousands of kilos of meat being wasted, all the car casses lying rotting. So I thought why not treat, can, and export this the Southeast? I off e red the fis h e rmen Re 1 to 2 a kg." Still the going rate, this was enough to trigger the killings. A single whale shark catch is now said to translate into roughly a lakh and thirt the exporter; around Rs 20,000 for the fis h e rmen. And though the fis h e rmen still use the liver oil to waterproof their boats, should they sell, the price is now around Rs 7,500 for a 250-litre barrel.

Do these commercial benefits to the fis h e rmen justify the killings? Rita Banerji has an important point to make here. "We were reall shaken by the kind of massacre we saw," says she. "We could have released our footage, exposed the killings and created an international scandal. But we’ve waited three years to explore why, get balanced picture, and weigh the benefits to the fishermen against the damages to world ecology. "

What then are the arguments against whale shark killings? For one, says Banatwalla, an erstwhile fish exporter who’s seen the Veraval harbour grow over the years and is now a hotel owner, there are better, less ecologically destructive substitutes like bostic paint for terproo fing boats. Using whale shark oil is sheer pro fligacy.on dly, small-scale fishermen in Veraval, Okha and Muthdwaraka admit that their actual source of income is through pomfret and other catch; whale sharks are seasonal, incidental surplus income. But aren ’t additional pro fits justification enough? The Gujarat Fisheries department, displaying a classic lack of foresight, would think so. A high official, pleading nonymity, says: "The whale shark is not protected by the Wildlife Protection Act of ’72. If fis h e rmen can make around a lakh from one whale, why not? We haven’t done any work on this and we don’t know the population size. But I suppose it’s high."

Pandey ’s amazed at this official callousness. "You  on ’t   need to know how many there are. Anything so huge has a limited number. Creatures like elephants, tigers and whale sharks don’t breed like roaches and rats. You’ll never see them in millions!" Dr Jay prakash, senior scientist at the C M F R I, echoes this sen-timent. "The whale shark should be on the endange red list," says he. "Earlier deaths were accidental, but the hunting is a disturbing sign. Whale sharks have a very slow regeneration cycle and at this rate the population will die out."

The issue of regeneration, in fact, is a crucial one. Whale sharks take 25-30 years to mature, and can live up to a 100 years or more , which means they have to spend one-fifth of their life evading capture to be able to reproduce. The rising capture of juvenile whales then spells sure disaster. Intriguingly, almost nothing’s known of the whale shark’s mating patterns. One specimen harpooned in the Philippines was towed to the shore. Once beached, fishermen were amazed to find that it was not one shark, but a mating couple! Then again, until a whale shark with again, until a whale shark with 250 embryos about 12-25 inches long was captured in Taiwan in ’93, scientists were hotly debating whether they were oviparous (pups hatched f rom eggs) or viviparous (pups born directly, as in mammals).The Taiwan specimen proved it was ovi-viviparous!

THE lack of information on the whale shark— the largest  yet most gentle fish in the ocean, and perhaps one of  the older living beings on earth, is part of its mystique. Internationally, population measurement started only in the ’90s and the status of the whale shark on the World Conservation whale shark on the World Conservation Union’s Red List is "indeterminate". But countries like Kenya, Australia and Japan have been quick to understand its intrinsic value and cash in on its potential as a tourist attraction.  The Okinawa aquarium in Japan  is perhaps the only one of its kind to house a whale shark. Thousands of  divers journey to the Ningaloo Reef— a  famous marine park in West Australia which like Veraval can boast of regular visits from whale sharks— and spend about $3,000 apiece for an opportunity to dive with the mythic fish. The Dive Equipment Manufacturers Association in the US estimates that sport  divers spend about $1.4 bn annually; and Geoff  Ta ylor, a famous Australian fil m- maker, stresses the potential boost it can give Third World economies in terms of eco-tourism.

But can the Indian government, marine officials and the fis h e rfolk along the coast be canny enough to turn the destructive killing fields into booming Phone calls seeking information from the department of oceanography in Delhi, marine institutes and fishery departments at Thiruvananthapuram, Kochi, Mumbai and Veraval, all yield nothing. As Dr Abidi, a professor at Mumbai’s Centre of Indian Fisheries Education, points out: "I don’t think anybody’s worked on this species in India. In fact, deep sea fisheries is in its infancy here . Interest is mostly concentrated on commercial species." The perennial cliche presents itself. Aw a reness and education is key.

Nobody except those who’ve seen the whale shark at sea or lying beached can quite hazard its grandeur or the full force of its might. Swelling waves which dwarf the small fib reglass boats, the taut thrill of the first sight, the terrible tension as man harpoons the leviathan and an awesome, elemental struggle ensues... Shibani Chaudhury who, along with Pandey and Banerji, witnessed one such expedition on the high seas describes it as "a humbling, perception - altering experience". But she is quick to draw attention to the dangers. "Even if you were to set aside ecological concerns, harpooning  whale sharks is so fraught with risk, is it worth the extra rupees the fis h e rmen make?" Especially when that extra Rs 20,000 or so earned has to be divided between a crew of five or more people?

Once harpooned, a whale shark dives with great speed to unimag-inable depths threatening to drag the boat after it. But large , buoyant barrels attached to the fishing line force it up again. Then, though generically gentle, the fish struggles intensely— until exhausted, it allows itself to be towed in. A classic case is the marathon battle between the famous whale shark (12.18 m) beached at Cuffe Parade, the largest ever recorded, and its trappers.

In November ’83, a mechanised fishing boat named Maya Prasad caught a whale in its midwater gill nets. The fish started to tow the boat away. Two other boats moved in, but it still took the 15 crew members Prasad caught a whale in its midwater gill nets. The fish started to tow the boat away.Two other boats moved in, but it still took the 15 crew members of the three mechanised boats two-and-a-half hours to secure it. It took another eight hours to land it at Cuffe Parade. The shark was alive for 14 hours, susurrating heart - breakingly at intervals. It took eight people 10 hours to cut up the meat. The liver, which accounts for roughly 10 per cent of the total weight, is easier to handle. Once cut into strips, it’s put into metal barrels and left in the sun. It automatically melts into oil. The entire animal was sold for Rs 4,000 to a local merchant; it took 2,400 kg of salt to cure its flesh which in turn was sold for Rs 6,250 to exporters in Andhra.

Awe and a sense of the ludicrousness of the exercise is inevitable. The profit margins may have increased since ’83, but the threat to life and property have not decreased. Also as Shibani points out: "Harpooning probably goes against the fishermen ’s con-science.Once they’ve landed the invariably want others to cut it up."

Reams more can be said to plead the case of the whale shark. What secrets of the earth does this strange creature said to have evolved in the mid-eocene period, 50 million years ago, from hooved animals hold within itself? Romantic musings apart, the most urgent and cogent issue around protecting the whale shark is voiced by Rita Banerji. "We can no longer recreate forests or re establish ecological corridors lost to earth. Elephants and tigers will always be difficult to preserve. But here’s a species whose habitat is intact. We can protect it."

Though officials unperturbed by the killing of whale sharks would seem to belie it, perhaps in time Veraval will become a marine park and Indians can dream of diving with the whale shark!