Whale sharks move away from Donsol

I first visited Donsol in 2005, to snorkel with whale sharks there.  The locals call these sharks butanding.  On the first day, I was surprised as the 6 swimmers in my boat ended the day having snorkeled with 4 or 5 different butanding.  We disagreed about one whale shark, whether it was the same as the first one we had been in the water with.

My second day on the water was a repeat performance, with many whale sharks being seen and 3 or 4 that we swam with during our 3 hour boat trip.  We passed other butanding who were either going away from us or who were already “taken” by another boat.

Last year I heard some rumors that the whale sharks had not returned as usual.  But this was something nobody wanted to talk much about.  I took no groups there either of the last two years so I did not really have first hand knowledge.

In the Philippine newspaper, the Inquirer, an article just a few days ago finally confirmed those rumors.

As I write this it is July 26 and the whale shark (butanding) tourist season in the Philippines has mostly come to an end.  Tourist income is reported by the Philippine Inquirer to be down by 50% from around 4 million pesos two years ago to only 2 million so far this year. 

Donsol is a small town of 47,000 located in a distant and relatively undeveloped region.  The community is surely feeling the pain of losing half their income.

There were only two butanding spotted during a substantial part of this snorkeling season and last year was similar. The drop in whale sharks to swim with obviously led to the drop in tourists coming to Donsol to snorkel alongside whale sharks.

Why are most of the whale sharks gone?  The number one most likely cause is pollution diminishing the available plankton supply near to shore, forcing the butanding to feed further offshore.  Everywhere I travel in the Philippines, I see housing built out over rivers, no provisions for sewage.  The rivers are all polluted here without exception, some to the stage of being nothing more than black, oily, trash clogged breeding grounds for mosquitoes and disease.

Malapascua Island where I live in a simple bamboo hut or bahay kubo as it is called here, has no rivers.  This small island of about 6 square miles has only 3,000 inhabitants.  There are no rivers, so sewage and most trash disposed of in a sanitary way.  The ocean is water is clean and still provides a great place to dive.

If Donsol wants its tourist industry to recover, the local government needs to act immediately to clean up the rivers that flow into the ocean in the area the butanding normally congregate to feed.  When the sharks do return, the tourism officials then need to more closely regulate the snorkeling encounters.  It is not the tourists’ actions that may place stress on the whale sharks, but the unrestrained large flow of boats and swimmers.

There is speculation in the Inquirer news article that the 40 permitted boats carrying up to 6 passengers each that ply the shore near Donsol could be responsible by causing stress upon the feeding animals.  Swimming tourists and poorly captained boats frequently cross too close in front of feeding whale sharks, causing them to turn or change direction and disrupting their normally calm feeding methods.

In an effort to satisfy all comers, the number of boats that go out from the Donsol boat office is limited primarily by the number of tourists who arrive wanting to go out on the boats.  A more orderly and restrictive schedule needs to be developed.  A schedule plan that places less pressure on the animals.  Perhaps limiting the number of boats allowed out with snorkelers to 6 or 8 boats at any time would help reduce the interference and stress upon the feeding butanding.

This might mean that some tourists who arrive without reservations would be forced to wait an extra day.  Or they might only get to go out in the afternoon, missing the best morning snorkel time.  This seems like a small price to pay compared to chasing the animals away from their normal feeding area and thus out of reach of the boats.

I suspect the economic pressures upon the local government will divert attention away from these two stressors – pollution and stress from too many boats.  Rather I imagine all entities involved will erroneously jump on the Global Warming bandwagon.  The Inquirer article has paved the way.  It will be easy and politically correct right now to blame all the ills of the environment upon Global Warming.  But it is not an accurate assessment of what is really happening at this moment.

The Inquirer listed warming water due to Global Warming as the most likely cause of the whale sharks changing their long held feeding grounds. But the water temps at 28 to 29 degrees Celsius (about 84 Fahrenheit) are nearly perfect for whale sharks.  

It has been my experience with whale sharks at various locations around the world over the last 10 years that when the water temperature drops below 80 degrees F. the whale sharks become difficult to find.  When I do find them in cooler water they are swimming faster and frequently deeper, making it almost impossible to have an excellent snorkeling encounter with one of them.

I think global warming is being blamed for too many bad environmental events that are not caused by this phenomenon.  This current situation in Donsol is a prime example of the Global Warming alarm misdirecting attention from more immediate and very real concerns.