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September 24, 2005
Tracking a Whale Shark in the Indian Ocean
A team of students from the German Europen School Singapore GPS tagged a whale shark in August. They are using Google Earth to show the track of this gentle 7 meter long creature which they named "Schroeder". Whale Sharks are more whale than shark by most common perceptions. Their primary food is plankton which is why they have very large mouths so they can swim and capture large quantities of these small bits of food.
Download Schroeder's track 
. You can see from the track that Schroeder has moved about 700 KM in the last month from the Seychelles (where they tagged him) towards the continent of Africa. This is an interesting application of Google Earth to visualize the track of a wild animal through the oceans. I expect other marine scientists who are tracking whales, turtles, dolphins, and many other sea creatures will begin to follow this excellent example for using our favorite tool. The students have created an english version of their site which you can find here. Their post at the GE Community can be found here.
By the way, I found a link on their web site to a story that Whale Sharks are getting smaller due to overfishing. Definitely worth a read since overfishing is a serious concern affecting sea life around the world.
Posted by FrankTaylor at September 24, 2005 9:34 AM
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Comments
Posted by: david at January 23, 2008 1:33 PM
What is the average number of spots on a whale shark?& What does a whale shark do all day?
Posted by: Taylor at April 17, 2008 4:21 PM
What could you do to help whale sharks, is there a donation center to help this species? If not we should start one for them.
Posted by: Taylor at April 17, 2008 4:23 PM
I was wondering if there was a way I could monitor whales. like their location and diet for a science project. thanx!
-fiona
Posted by: fiona at August 29, 2008 4:46 PM
This just made my day that much brighter. Thanks a million. Something else I stumbled across was this www.whales.org.za . Take a look! Keep up the great work!
Posted by: Whale information at June 4, 2009 8:55 AM
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Dear Sir/Madam,
May I ask which particular combination of was used? GPS tag and receiver?
Yours faithfully,
Dr. David Shi