Indeed, renowned ichthyologist Dr Gerald Allen, a former curator at the Western Australian Museum and a consultant with Conservation International, calls Cenderawasih the Galapagos of the East because of the richness of its marine life. As a result, it has a high percentage of endemic coral and fish species found nowhere else on Earth. Looking like a big gulp out of the north coast of Papua in the far east of the Indonesian archipelago, Cenderawasih Bay was an ancient sea during the last Ice Age, separated from the flow of the Pacific Ocean. Whale shark feeding under bagan platforms in Cenderawasih Bay, Indonesia. It was the most spine-tingling experience. I swam with eight recently, one showing its research tag, as they wove all around me to filter feed bait fish thrown from a traditional bagan fishing platform. However, it’s only been six or seven years since they started liaising with international and Indonesian scientists to conduct whale shark research in Indonesian Papua’s remote Cenderawasih Bay, which has an estimated population of 135 mostly young male whale sharks, according to a research team from the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF) Indonesia.Ĭenderawasih (Bird of Paradise) Bay has become known as one of the best places in the world to swim with whale sharks. Mark and other Australian marine scientists have been researching whale sharks, officially listed as endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List, for more than 20 years at Western Australia’s Ningaloo Reef. There are so many clues to uncover both about our past and our future.” Dr Mark Meekan removing parasitic copepods from the lips of a whale shark for a genetics study, Ningaloo, Western Australia. We’re talking about convergent evolution, where two species with different ancestors develop similar characteristics. And what we learn from this research could also tell us about the whole sweep of evolution, how life in the oceans has evolved to culminate in giant filter-feeding sharks and whales that have emerged from very different origins. “We’re interested in how and why they stay in tropical waters. “Their whole metabolism is set by the warm water around them so they need lots of food to keep their basal metabolism going. “There probably hasn’t been a giant filter-feeding fish of that size living in tropical waters since the end of the dinosaur period, which makes the whale shark an enigma. “Whale sharks spend their entire lives moving around nutrient-poor tropical waters,” says Perth-based Dr Mark Meekan, Senior Principal Research Scientist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science.
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