Passengers on a speedboat passing through the Mentawai Strait on a one-hour cruise from Siberut Island to Padang, West Sumatra, were lucky enough to spot herds of whale sharks in the water on Saturday afternoon.

One of the passengers, 51-year-old environmentalist Rahmadi, a former director of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) in West Sumatra, predicted that a migration of the fish had taken place from the south to the north.

“I saw them emerge while spouting water from their heads,” Rahmadi told The Jakarta Post in Padang, the provincial capital, on Saturday, adding that he had managed to get some photos of the whale sharks.

He said he had spotted two or more of the animals near the boat at least four times.

It was the first time for Rahmadi to see whale sharks in the middle of the sea in Mentawai waters, an area he had traversed many times over the past 20 years.

Just days before, a seven-meter long whale shark was found dead, stranded on Jati Beach in Tuapeijat, Sipora Island, Mentawai on Tuesday.

The local disaster mitigation agency (BPBD) dragged the dead animal onto the beach to be buried.

Researcher Harfiandri Damanhuri of Bung Hatta University’s School of Fishery in Padang said that so far there had been no local studies on the migration route or the habitat of whale sharks in the Indian Ocean.

Yet, he said, there had been a number of reports about stranded whale sharks on beaches in West
Sumatra.

“From these at least a provisional conclusion can be drawn that this region has long been a migration route for whale sharks,” Harfiandri told the Post on Sunday.

The oldest recorded finding, he said, was of a whale shark found stranded in the 1970s in Pasaman waters. Its skeleton is now exhibited at the Kinantan Cultural and Wildlife Park in Bukittinggi.

In 1992, a whale shark was netted by a fisherman. Another one stranded at Sungai Bungin Bay, Padang, in 2014. In 2016, several whale sharks were found on the beach of South Pesisir regency.

He said whale sharks were a subtropical fish whose habitat in the region extended from Kalimantan to the Japanese archipelago. The effect of climate change on the seabed is thought to have caused the animals to migrate to Indonesian waters.

“Further research, however, is needed to see whether they just migrated or whether they in fact have a territory in the Indian Ocean,” Harfiandri said.

When migrating, whale sharks did so in pairs or in communities of up to six, he added. Sometimes they were dragged by strong currents and washed up on beaches.

Considering the frequent stranding of whale sharks on Indonesian beaches, Harfiandri suggested that it was time for Indonesia to be serious about rescuing them. So far, no stranded whale sharks in Indonesia are known to have been saved.

The rescue of whale sharks is in fact included in a 2016 to 2020 action plan from the Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Ministry. He said 25 people, including himself, had been trained in October 2016 on technical supervision and the handling of stranded animals.

“But advanced training is needed for officers in the regions,” he said, adding that whale sharks made an important contribution to the ecosystem, meaning that healthy whale sharks also meant healthy seas.

Indonesia is home to nine protected whale shark species.

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