Diving Thoughts

An 18 foot whale shark was found last week in Bahay Kambing, a cove in the municipality of Tingloy, by some divers, including several from Hong Kong. Its dorsal and pectoral fins had all been cut off and there were rope marks on its tail. It was towed to Caban cove which was calmer and volunteers tried to help it. Unfortunately it died in the night from its injuries.

Having been fortunate enough to see a similarly sized whale shark in Thailand, this is very sad.

Whale sharks are classified as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and they are protected under Philippine law. Unfortunately that doesn’t seem to have made much difference in this case.

The photo above was taken from WWF-Philippines website, where they have a long article on this.

Here’s another photo and a link to an article, this time from the Philippine Star’s website.

I’ve also seen a number of photos on Facebook, so the incident is becoming more widely reported worldwide.

There’s also a thread on Scubaboard’s forum.

According to a couple of the articles I read, “locals” have suggested that the whale shark may have become entangled in a fishing net, and had its fins off in order to recover the net! Several years ago in Hong Kong during a shallow night dive a bunch of squid fishermen turned up. Since lights attract the squid, they no doubt concluded that underwater dive lights would be even better at attracting them, so they dropped nets around 3 pairs of divers. It’s a good job they didn’t apply the same logic as these Philippine “locals”, otherwise we’d have got 6 divers back with no arms and legs left.

Presumably if these “locals” are to be believed and saving the nets were the priority, the fins would have been discarded and no-one would dream of selling them for USD 800 per kilo. And I’m not convinced that under Philippine law that it makes any difference why you kill a protected animal, it is still illegal. I don’t think I’m alone in that view as apparently WWF-Philippines and the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) have announced a reward of P100,000 to anyone who can provide information leading to the arrest of the people involved.

Two cousins, diving at the Twins near Whitiangi in the North Island of New Zealand, were hassled by a 2 metre bronze whaler on Monday (15 Feb) afternoon. They were about 10 metres from their boat when the shark approached them in what seemed an aggressive manner. As it swam at them for a second time, they threw an old anchor that they had picked up at it. This deterred it briefly, but they then defended themselves with a cray hook, before one of them kicked it in the head with his fin, giving them time to get back on the boat.

The cousins had hung a couple of freshly caught kingfish on the side of their boat, which may well have got the shark’s attention. Clinton Duffy of the Department of Conservation said that the bronze whaler is a large shark, but has quite small teeth as it generally feeds on school fish. They are generally not aggressive but can become excited when there is blood or dead fish in the water.

The above photo is from the New Zealand Herald, and you can read more details here.

The Standard are reporting that Elizabeth Quat will become the first woman from Hong Kong to be involved in a diving expedition to the Antarctic for research purposes. The article isn’t actually clear on whether she will actually be diving there, or whether she is the first Hong Kong woman on a diving expedition there or just the first on a diving expedition “for research”. All in all they don’t give us much news to go on, although their photo does show some diving gear and a camera housing.

She will apparently be a photographer as part of Project Elysium which will “document the vista, flora and fauna of the Antarctic Peninsula”. This is done with a view to raise awareness of climate change. It should be a great trip, so good luck to Ms  Quat. Hopefully we’ll have some great photos to show later.

You can read the article on the Standard website, from where the photo above came.

Tusa are recalling some RS670 regulators sold between May and September 2009 because of loosening of the BLC plug on the first stage. This can apparently cause a high pressure leak leading to an unstable intermediate pressure. Approximately 60 first stages are affected with the following serial numbers:

• UR600022 – UR600029
• UR600031 – UR600103
• UR600637 – UR600676
• UR600708 – UR600716
• UR600737 – UR600776

For more information, go to Tusa’s website.