Where do whale sharks mate? The search to learn where the magic happens for the world’s biggest fish

JAMESTOWN St Helena AP Whale sharks shouldn t be hard for scientists to find They are enormous they are the biggest fish in the sea and perhaps the biggest fish to have ever lived They are uncovered in warm oceans all around the world By shark standards they are slow swimmers But they somehow manage to also be very private Scientists don t know where they mate and they ve never observed it before They do in the end have certain clues though Scientists suspect the magic may be happening in the waters around St Helena a remote volcanic island in the South Atlantic Ocean where Napoleon Bonaparte was once exiled and died It s the only place in the world where adult male and female whale sharks are known to regularly gather in roughly equal numbers and food doesn t seem to be the main attraction Kenickie Andrews the marine conservation project manager at the St Helena Trust says he s seen male sharks chasing females nibbling on their pectoral fins and displaying themselves to the female sharks akin to mating rituals observed in other sharks including great whites What we ve seen here is classic shark courtship behavior he commented To this day we haven t seen effective copulation but it is proof whale sharks are in our waters trying out these behaviors Whale sharks typically measure from to meters to feet weigh up to tons and are plankton eaters all sharks have a unique pattern of white spots on their upper side Scientists say they need to know where the sharks are mating and giving birth so they can protect those areas possibly by creating marine reserves where threats like fishing are banned Whale sharks are designated as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature the group says their population has been largely depleted Simon Pierce who has studied whale sharks globally declared he has photographed suspected mating scars on female sharks in St Helena possibly from when male sharks bit their pectoral fins to hold onto them and get into mating position Suspected whale shark mating behavior has also been informed in Australia and the sharks also gather in places like Mexico the Arabian Sea and the Maldives but that seems to amount to male harassment of immature females explains Pierce executive director and co-founder of the charity Marine Megafauna Foundation That s not the incident in St Helena where adult males and adult females are present Fisheries experts in St Helena have also provided eyewitness accounts of what they stated were instances of whale sharks mating Administrators described a lot of thrashing at the water s surface by two enormous sharks touching belly to belly but those sightings were not captured on video and are not considered sufficient proof by scientists Cameron Perry a research scientist at the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta has been working with colleagues on the island to attach camera tags to investigate what the whale sharks are doing but have run into a few technical difficulties the sharks dive deeper than meters feet and the tags can t withstand the pressure We have particular very tantalizing and teasing video Perry mentioned We have two sharks about to make contact and then our camera falls off Perry isn t sure what the sharks might be doing far below the surface but hopes new equipment being developed will help answer that question It s just a numbers contest in terms of how often we can get in the water Alistair Dove who has previously conducted research in St Helena revealed he s seen male whale sharks soliciting contact from adult female sharks including rotating their claspers or sexual organs in what he declared was the sharky equivalent of an erection These sexual behaviors are very very rare in whale sharks noted Dove now CEO of the Museum of Science History in Jacksonville Florida This is one of the huge unanswered questions about the biggest fish in the world Dove explained Andrews of the St Helena Trust commented he was hopeful someone might be able to capture video evidence of whale shark mating but acknowledged the researchers presence and tagging efforts might inadvertently alter the sharks mating practices Maybe they don t want to be seen he explained Maybe like everyone else they need privacy The Associated Press Wellness and Science Department receives aid from the Howard Hughes Biological Institute s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation The AP is solely responsible for all content Source