Overview
Introduction
to Sharks
Tagging and Migration
What Does Tagging Have To Do With Migration?
How Are Sharks Tagged?
Latitude and Longitude: Recording and Reporting Locations
Workbook
Activities
for Classroom
Shark Tagging Learning Activity
Whale Shark
Despite its name, the whale shark bears no relation to whales, which are mammals. It is a true shark and holds the record as the largest fish in the world, probably the reason for its name. No one knows how large they might grow, however, whale sharks have been regularly measured at between 32 - 38 feet (9.75 -11.6m), the size of a bus. There have been reports of even larger individuals.
The whale shark and the basking shark have an unusual feeding method. These two species, along with the recently discovered megamouth shark, are especially adapted for filtering large numbers of small organisms out of the water. These filter feeders engulf small fish, crustaceans and drifting invertebrates as they swim slowly along. The small prey are taken in at the mouth then filtered near the surface of the shark’s gills as water passes out through the large gill slits. Whale sharks, dark brown with yellowish spots topside and white underside, are typically found world-wide in tropical seas, though occasionally they may range into temperate seas.
Although very little is known about whale sharks, they are apparently migratory throughout the world, with their movements timed to seasonal blooms of plankton and mass coral spawnings, both shallow and deep. Frequently these spawnings are associated with cycles of the moon and occur in predictable patterns. Research suggests that whale sharks appear annually in March and April near Exmouth Bay, off the northwestern coast of Australia, probably in response to the mass coral spawnings which occur at that time. Other researchers have reported whale sharks re-appearing regularly off the coast of Queensland in January and February, following the mass coral spawnings on the Great Barrier Reef. They have also been observed in the Caribbean during plankton blooms and mass spawnings of polychaete worms, which are also timed to lunar cycles in the summer.
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