Djibouti is a tiny country at the top right-hand corner of Africa… it is an incredibly interesting country as it straddles the intersection of two of the great continental plates that progress down Africa through Djibouti, Ethopia and Kenya as the East African Rift Valley. This area is consequently very active geologically and volcanically and the ‘rift’ is responsible for the deep and steep sided Gulf of Tadjourah, where the Indian Ocean extends into Africa in an attempt to swamp the valley.

Besides being a really interesting place, Djibouti also hosts a seasonal aggregation of whale sharks, and as is found in all the known whale shark aggregations in the Indian Ocean so far, the individuals found here are mainly juvenile males…. But that’s where the similarities stop! These are a group of very small whale sharks, much smaller than are found anywhere else in the Indian Ocean, and much smaller than found anywhere else globally, so they are very special!

Whale sharks are born at around 65cms in length and from aquarium reared pups, we know they grow at around 100cms a year until they are around 3 metres in length;  after that the growth slows to just 20-25cms a year. As we are getting 2.5 metre sharks in this aggregation these are very young whale sharks indeed and as such are probably pretty close to the place where they were born. That is really important as to date globally we do not have a single confirmed pupping area for the world’s largest shark! As there is no aggregation of the ‘normal’ sized juveniles in this region it may well be that these very young sharks move away from this area into other Indian Ocean aggregations as they mature.

Photo-identification of the spot pattern of these sharks has been proven to be a good way to identify individuals and is stable over reasonably long periods of time; the capture of large numbers of individual photo-identities from Djibouti now will allow us to see if and where they appear as they mature and leave the aggregation in Djibouti.

With the support of the Save Our Seas Foundation, we are able to run a monitoring expedition to Djibouti to document this aggregation and collect as much data as is possible. The project covers a three week intensive study period in January (the peak season) to capture the maximum number of photo identities as well as environmental data on the surrounding area. The programme will run from December 31st to January 20th 2012 in three seven day periods (Dec 31- Jan 6, Jan 7-14, Jan 15-20).

Since its inception, this programme has been possible only through the participation of interested individuals, so we would love to have you come and join us…. just e-mail us for details!