WTI saves Whale Sharks in Gujarat

[Guest guest]

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http://www.asianage.com/presentation/leftnavigation/opinion/op-ed/porbandar-fall\

s-for-a-shark,-gets-down-to-saving-it.aspx

* *Porbandar falls for a shark, gets down to saving it**

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*Vivek Menon*

 

Jan. 30 : 27/11 was not the best day to be in Porbandar. The morning papers

were describing Porbandar as the town that launched the Mumbai-bound

terrorists only a day ago. People were huddled in hushed clusters talking

terrorism or walking the waterfront, peering at the horizon and imagining

boats long gone. I stood a few minutes watching them and then walked the

short distance from the waterfront to Kirti Chowk where a different milieu

was taking shape. The chowk was awash with blue and white spotted T-shirts.

A thousand young children waited patiently in long snaking queues while

traffic wove around them, cows, dogs and camels nudged and walked through

them and schoolteachers and uniformed cops tried to maintain a semblance of

order. The children were all agog, necks craning, bodies straining and a low

hum of excitement pulsing through their blue and white mass. And then, as if

from the very shores of the ocean, a strange apparition made its way up the

street. Like the Matsya avatar in Hindu mythology, the giant blue-black

incarnation of Lord Vishnu that arose from the oceans to save the world, a

large blue fish rose from the horizon and made its way up the street. Like

the god of yore, it had come to earth as a saviour of souls. Unlike its

divine inspiration, this one was a rubber float, drawn into Porbandar on a

camel cart. A day after the senseless carnage at Mumbai, on Kartik Amavas,

Vhali the whale shark had risen from the seas. The town that was the home of

Mahatma Gandhi, the apostle of non-violence, was witnessing a different sort

of homecoming.

 

Ten years ago, Vhali did not exist. The whale shark, the size of a

double-decker bus, the largest fish in the world, was called " Barrel " by the

local Koli fishermen, a reference to the barrels that were used as floats to

drag the shark to the shores after harpooning. When Mike Pandey made the

film Shores of Silence, hundreds of them were hunted off the shores of

Gujarat every year, ostensibly to gain oil from its liver to waterproof

local fishing boats. The meat and the skin were also used but almost as if

they were by-products. The fins were sent off to China and Taiwan where, in

deference to their massive size, they were used to adorn Chinese restaurants

and apothecary windows to advertise the availability of shark fin soup or

medicine. This age-old migrant of tropical oceans, that scientists have

shown can dive up to 2,000 feet under water, seemingly in play, was being

reduced to a chopped up fin and a few barrels of oil. And Gujarat and India

were unaware of this conservation issue.

 

In 2001, the Wildlife Trust of India (WTI) joined several others in lobbying

that the fish be protected and the Indian government responded positively by

placing it under Schedule I of the Indian Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972.

Next year, WTI took the battle to Santiago, backing a joint Indo-Philippines

bid to put it under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered

Species. This too was done. Now, the dilemma was to convert these pieces of

paper into ground-level protection.

 

In January 2004, in what has now come to be viewed as a landmark

public-private partnership, WTI and the International Fund for Animal

Welfare (IFAW) teamed up with Tata, which has a large presence in the area,

and the Gujarat forest department and launched a campaign to spread

awareness and change perceptions about the world's largest fish among

specific target groups in Gujarat.

 

The whale shark campaign was a combination of several key ideas, including

creation of a flagship using an inflatable life-size whale shark that drew

people wherever it went, emotional connection with the traditions and

cultural ethics of local communities by the spiritual leader Morari Bapu,

and a huge groundswell of response from young people and schoolchildren.

 

Morari Bapu, in particular, was the key to a million hearts when he first

likened Vhali to Matsya avatar and said killing the shark amounted to

deicide. This stopped the hunting almost instantaneously, but he further

strengthened emotive ties of the locals by likening the fish to a daughter

who, after marriage, had left her home and migrated to South

Africa/Australia. The daughter, he said, was returning home to give birth.

Which father would not provide a safe home to his daughter to give birth, he

thundered, and all of Gujarat sat up and listened. The hunters no longer

hunted, the government agencies were now in competition to spearhead the

protection and a million children filled my offices with paintings, stories

and other emotive outpourings. The campaign had truly arrived.

 

Within a year of its launch, the campaign successfully converted former

whale shark hunters into its protectors, convincing them to voluntarily

release accidentally-trapped whale sharks from their fishing nets. Within

two years, the Gujarat government started a scheme to provide relief to

fishermen for the loss of their nets, which is almost inevitable in such

rescues. In four years, about 80 whale sharks have been released by

Gujarat's fisher folk. Gujarat was no longer killing hundreds of sharks!

 

The campaign also gave whale shark the name Vhali — the loved one. Postal

covers were released, five towns declared Vhali as their city mascot and the

state declared Vhali Utsav on Kartik Amavas each year, the only conservation

day dedicated to an animal in India! What a turnaround for a fish that did

not even have a proper name a few years ago!

 

In India, tiger conservation has been going on for over three decades, but

we are still trying to save the tiger. In contrast, in just four years

Gujarat's people have saved the whale shark at its shores and conferred on

it the title of " Gujarat Gaurav, " making Vhali another symbol of parochial

pride after Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and the Asiatic lion.

 

" Vhali re Vhali, Whale shark Amari, Gujarat nu Gaurav " . This campaign cry of

a thousand children took my mind off, even if briefly, from the global

economic meltdown and Mumbai terror attacks. In their eyes I saw hope, and

cynicism took a backseat for me on 27/11.

 

Vivek Menon is a wildlife conservationist and the author of several books on

India's natural history. He is currently executive director of the Wildlife

Trust of India