Baby Giant's Sad Death Far From Home

February 12, 2007

Release from: John Yeld
Cape Argus (South Africa)

A giant baby had a sad end at the weekend when it washed up and died on a beach near Cape Point.

The "baby" giant was a young male whale shark, estimated at between one and two years old but already a massive five metres long and probably weighing in at about 700kg.

He was a long way from home - perhaps somewhere off the Mozambican coastline - when he succumbed.

The whale shark (Rhincodon typus) is the largest shark and the largest living fish species, with the adults reaching up to 12m and weighing as much as 15 tons.

"Ag shame, it's just a baby!" said marine biologist Alison Kock, who went down to the scene near the Hoek van Bobbejaan in a restricted part of the Cape Point section of the Table Mountain National Park to inspect and measure the carcass and take biopsy samples for DNA testing.

The presence of the whale shark was reported by the Hare family, who donated land to the original Cape of Good Hope nature reserve and who still own cottages on the coast here.

They alerted the park's marine unit, which responded on Saturday evening.

"I found it in the shallow water on the beach," marine unit ranger Ralph Kelly said yesterday.

"It was still alive, but barely. It was just moving its tail, and it moved its eye when I touched it. We couldn't do anything overnight, so we came back this morning."

At first he couldn't find it again, but then he saw eight otters moving around a rocky gulley at the far end of the beach: "They were obviously looking at something, so we came over and found it wedged upside down between these rocks."

Kock said the species was still relatively poorly known to science, although research projects that included the use of satellite tags to track the whale sharks were under way.

They are normally found only in tropical and warm oceans - there are populations off Mozambique and in the Seychelles, for example - and only occasional specimens have washed up on Cape beaches.

"Potentially, the DNA sample will allow us to find out which population this animal belongs to," she said.

Whale sharks are filter-feeders with huge mouths that can be up to 1,5m wide. The gentle creatures pose no threat to humans.

According to the Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia, the species was first identified in April 1828 following the harpooning of a 4,6 m specimen in Table Bay.

It was described the following year by Andrew Smith, a military doctor associated with British troops stationed in Cape Town. He published a more detailed description of the species in 1849. The name "whale shark" comes from its large size and eating habits - a shark as large as a whale that shares a similar filter-feeder eating mode.