Whale shark telemetry

Scott Eckert, WIDECAST

Management of whale shark Rhincodon typus populations is hampered by a lack of information on the range travelled by individual whale sharks. This applies particularly in South-east Asia where the whale shark is increasingly used in commercial trade and for ecotourism. In this study an investigation of themovements of individual whale sharks from the greater Sulu Sea region was initiated using satellite telemetry. The movements of six sharks were monitored from 7 to 128 days. Two sharks travelled distances of 4567 and 8025 km. Both sharks moved through multiple political jurisdictions, confirming the need to manage the populations on a multilateral or regional level.

This study was undertaken to evaluate whether whale sharks found in Malaysian and Philippine water are a shared stock. Differential management models (complete protection or managed harvest) of whale shark stocks between these national jurisdictions should be harmonized if such stocks are shared. By satellite tracking sharks found in each nation's waters, it should be possible to determine if individual animals move between jurisdictions.

Argos raw data are included in the downloaded zip file.

The dataset has been updated over time as outlined below. Each entry includes the version number, release date, type of change, and a short description.

Overview

This section explains attributes included in the original dataset. OBIS-SEAMAP restricts the attributes available to the public to date/time, lat/lon and species names/counts only. Should you need other attributes described here, you are encouraged to contact the data provider.

Attributes described below represent those in the original dataset provided by the provider.
Only minimum required attributes are visible and downloadable online. Other attributes may be obtained upon provider's permission.

Attributes in dataset

Attribute (table column)	Description
oid	Unique ID number (generated by OBIS-SEAMAP)
animal_id	Animal ID
ptt_id	PTT ID
date_gmt	Date at GMT
minute_gmt	Minutes after midnight at GMT
gmt_hours	Hours at GMT
conversion	Conversion
obs_date	Date at local time zone
obs_time	Time at local time zone
quality	Quality flag
latitude	Latitude in decimal degrees
longitude	Longitude in decimal degrees
column_l	definition not provided
column_m	definition not provided
column_n	definition not provided
species	Species name
sp_tsn	Taxonomic Serial Number added by OBIS-SEAMAP
obs_count	Number of animals (always 1) added by OBIS-SEAMAP
geom	Geometry field added by OBIS-SEAMAP