Last night saw the majority of Malapascua’s professional dive community gathered at Evolution to listen to Dr Simon Oliver and the production team from Discovery Channel explain what they would be doing over the next month.
As our regular blog readers already know, the team will be making the first full length documentary exclusively about the Thresher sharks, and hopefully helping us to learn more about these wonderful creatures. Dr Oliver explained to the gathered masses, how he would be approaching the project and the techniques the team will be using to monitor and asses the sharks, and gather more data. Dr Oliver and team showed off some of their scientific tools and helped everyone to understand how they would tag the thresher sharks, to be able to monitor their biology as well as their location.
The information that is collected will allow the team to understand a great deal more about how these sharks live, the sizes of their population, and where else they are when they are not being cleaned at Monad shoal. The team is optimistic that they may find more areas where the sharks congregate and that they’ll be able to designate zones to be recommended for protection by government.
With all the information gained the main objective is to be able to protect the Thresher sharks from fishing and other challenges that threaten them by creating government support and understanding of the vulnerability and importance of this creature to not just Malapascua, but to the entire country and wider region.
So other than some great footage from the rebreather wearing cameramen, and in depth new information about the sharks lifestyle, we are also hope to see gains in government support and protection. Tell your friends, raise awareness and together we can all help to protect the sharks of our planet!
