Dive Into Your Imagination

Imagine a job that requires spending all day in the sun swimming with the world’s largest fish!  Well, as cofounder of the Maldives Whale Shark Research Program, Adam Harman gets to do just that! He spends five months a year in the Maldives, an archipelago of islands off of the Western coast of India, studying and protecting these beautiful sharks!

What is the Maldives Whale Shark Research Program, and what does it aim to accomplish?
The Maldives Whale Shark Research Program exists to conduct whale shark research and to foster community focused conservation initiatives throughout the Maldives. The research organization has quickly grown into a conservation charity dealing with the issues facing the ecosystem and the Maldivian communities. The charity is also developing the largest Marine Protected Area in the Maldives, alongside the Maldivian government, and contributes findings to scientific literature and to education, conservation, and management authorities to promote science-based conservation of ocean life, helping to ensure the protection and conservation of a species ‘vulnerable to extinction’ – the whale shark.


 

The Charity’s humanitarian aims are to help provide the local community with alternative employment opportunities.  This includes increasing higher education avenues and to work with the government to introduce eco-system education to the curriculum.  We also aim to encourage more sustainable living practices and to deal with the waste management issues that the archipelago faces.

Your program is such a great thing for both the Maldivians as well as their sharks.  Annie swam with whale sharks while she was in the Galapagos as well!  You can see some of her footage with these amazing animals in her Who Lives in the Sea and Vision of the Sea DVDs! Tells us about your sharks!  What makes them different from other sharks?  How are they special?
The vast majority of whale sharks in Maldivian waters are immature males, which is true of most whale shark aggregations throughout the world, but not to the extent of this ‘population’.  Of the 130 known individuals only 5 are female.  These 130 known individuals have been encountered over 800 times during the past 4 years of research making the level of re-sights in the Maldives higher than anywhere else in the world.  Collectively these facts make the whale sharks using Maldivian waters incredibly special. 

Another aspect adding to their importance is their size.  The average size of the whale sharks in the Maldives is only 6 meters, and fishermen and tourists often report encounters with very small individuals. The MWSRP team actually encountered a two meter individual only a few weeks ago.  Because the whale sharks are almost all immature males the need for protection is imperative.  If illegal fishing, by-catch and boat strikes (all too common in the Maldives) continue to kill these fish they will never be able to reproduce and therefore repopulate, ultimately spelling the end of whale sharks in the Maldives.  

How did you get involved?  What is your role?
I was offered a volunteer position on the research team in the Maldives after meeting one of the founders of the MWSRP on holiday, which I gladly accepted.  At the end of the trip we began working on developing the MWSRP into a registered conservation minded charity.

The work is a natural progression from the voluntary work I was regularly doing in the UK. It is just on a much bigger scale now….and in the sun.  It’s a combination of my passions – helping people achieve their dreams, the ocean, sharks, and meeting new people.  The beauty of this organization is that we all have a hand in every part of its development, projects and collaborations but essentially my role is more on the business development side.

How do you plan to raise money for the MWSRP?  What kind of events do you have planned in the near future?
The MWSRP encourages resorts, tour operators and tourists to contribute to the eco-system that they’re enjoying. Each tourist creates a vast amount of waste and uses a huge amount of energy (diesel) while in the Maldives, so it seems only fair that they give a little back. We are constantly working with stakeholders to design and implement fund raising mechanisms that suit their brand standards, and makes a small but important contribution to the eco-system.

Events are an important part of a charity’s calendar. Planned 2010 events include the usual running of marathons (dressed as sharks) and fund raising dinner events. But, the team is also planning a not so usual event - Swimming the Maldives – a 900km adventure, designed to raise awareness of global warming, the plight of the shark and to raise funds for shark conservation throughout the archipelago. It will showcase the Maldives wide range of marine life as well as portray the issues facing this ‘soon to disappear’ chain of islands.

Whale sharks are commonly hunted, as well as finned in other areas of the world, what are the main threats to the whale sharks in the Maldives?
Even in the Maldives whale sharks are still occasionally hunted, and because they can travel such large distances they often venture into unprotected areas that can be very dangerous.  In the Maldives specifically, some of the biggest threats are due to unregulated tourism.  Over the past few weeks the team has recorded: 11 whale sharks displaying new boat strike injuries, many tourists attempting to touch/ride the sharks, tour operators fighting over who has more right to swim with the animals, and one tourist was actually hit by a speed boat. Immediate goals are to deal with the unregulated tourism threatening to force the whale sharks to seek other preferential habitats. It is imperative that tourism is monitored and controlled before the sharks disappear forever and/or a tourist is killed during the mayhem that can be a whale shark encounter in the Maldives.

View a Flickr Album of Whale Sharks from Galapagos and other Galapagos animals here.

How do you go about protecting the sharks?  What is a Marine Protected Area?  How does it work, and what are your goals for it?
There are many ways that the MWSRP helps to ensure the protection of sharks.
Raising awareness of the plight of the shark worldwide is an important conservation tool. The more education the public is exposed to the better the chances of sharks becoming protected, and the shark product trade being eradicated.
Local communities are a key to the conservation of this very special Maldivian eco-system so the charity focuses on school education, providing educational days on the reef for students. Other days are spent presenting and analyzing data with the students.
Involving the fishing industry in an attempt to re-establish a link (this time a non-extractive link) between them and the species is a very important aspect of the MWSRP’s work, as is working with the government to develop protected areas, guidelines, rules and regulations.

The largest Marine Protected Area (MPA) in the Maldives was developed by the MWSRP, in partnership with the government, in 2009. The area is a globally significant whale shark aggregation site which will help to ensure the conservation of the species at the same time as making the growing tourism surrounding the whale shark more sustainable. The MPA dream – to be the first regulated, revenue generating, collaboratively managed MPA in the Maldives, ensuring the conservation of a very special area and ensuring the local community benefits directly from the tourism flooding their country.

What are some of your immediate goals for the project?  What about long term?
Immediate goals are to help the government enforce whale shark encounter guidelines. Whale shark tourism is at an all time high meaning habitat disturbance through unregulated tourism may force the whale sharks to seek other preferential habitats. There are far too many long term goals to list but they include further development of the MPA, involving more Maldivian people in the core MWSRP team, developing an eco-friendly research station helping to educate the communities about sustainable living and alternative energy supplies whilst providing a base for year round research and visiting scientists, students and teachers, tackling the growing waste management issues, and improving the education opportunities available to Maldivian students

What sort of work have you been doing with the Maldivian community?
The local community has been involved in every step of the MWSRP’s research and the development of the MPA. Every opportunity is taken to keep stakeholders up to date with the research and a great deal of consultations, presentations and workshops have been, and continue, to be held with all stakeholders to ensure it is very much a community project. Each stakeholder’s advice and concerns are regularly sought and taken into consideration. The fishing industry is also heavily involved with the project. Fishermen are a great source of generations of ocean knowledge and they love to share it with the team during formal and informal meetings.

The MWSRP school trips are often a highlight of the team’s calendar. Most students have never seen a whale shark and the team loves to share the research with the knowledge thirsty kids before they encounter their first shark, up close and personal.
Other projects include the initiation of two foreign student exchange programs, one with a UK school and the other a school in Doha. The MWSRP are also collaborating with a college in Virginia, USA, who are working to provide books to Maldivian schools, much needed books that are essential to a student’s education. 

What has been your favorite experience with the sharks?
My favorite experience was with my favorite individual. A small shark we discovered only a few weeks ago, and only our 5th female in the database, WS129 ‘Ella’ (named after my niece). She is the most interactive whale shark I’ve ever had the pleasure of encountering. Getting the ID shots was a little difficult as all she wanted to do was follow me everywhere. My colleague, Richard Rees, then dove to around 15 meters, to take advantage of a great photo opportunity, which the shark took as an opportunity to play. She decided to check him out and as he surfaced she followed him back up. My hope is that she does not get hit by a boat which will inevitably change her behavior, as it has done with so many of our other known individuals.

How can other people become involved with MWSRP?
There are many levels and opportunities for people to become involved with this project and/or the conservation of marine life.  The Global shark crisis, in which 73 million sharks are being fished globally each year is a major concern.  In order to help, stop buying and/or eating shark and shark fin products and be aware of the ingredients in the fish products you use. General research into the fishing and finning of sharks will help you make some educated decisions. Encourage friends to fish sustainably and never to take more than they need. Taking rubbish home from the beach is also a very important step in the conservation of the marine environment.

Adam Harman has volunteered his time on a variety of projects around the globe over the last 16 years – from Villa Tunari’s animal sanctuary in Bolivia to ‘self build’ projects and the building of schools in Australia, Asia, and the UK – at the same time as gaining a wealth of business knowledge from the running of a successful business since 1997.  Growing up on Australia’s west coast, the Ocean has had a strong hold over Adam’s life.  He became involved in the MWSRP in April 2008 and quickly realized it was his calling.  Adam’s principal interest in developing the MWSRP is to protect and conserve the whale shark and its habitat while ensuring the local community benefit from their natural resources through more than mere resort employment.  The MWSRP’s overall scientific objectives are to contribute findings to scientific literature and to education, conservation, and management authorities to promote science-based conservation of ocean life.

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