Brad Norman- Marine Conservationist
Whale shark researcher
A visionary plan to involve thousands of ordinary people worldwide in the photo-monitoring and conservation of whale sharks is helping to protect the magnificent sea creatures.
Driven by a love of the sea and the elusive whale shark, Murdoch University’s Adjunct Research Associate Brad Norman has dedicated most of his adult life to the understanding and protection of the world’s largest fish, Rhincodon typus - the whale shark.
ECOCEAN
The whale shark is sighted at more than 100 places around the globe – yet it remains so scarce almost nothing is known of its abundance, breeding habits or habitat preferences.
Brad’s painstaking research managed to prove that every whale shark has a pattern of white spots on its body as individually distinctive as a human fingerprint. It followed that underwater camera images could be used as a practical, non-invasive way to identify individuals.
In 1999 he set up the ECOCEAN Whale Shark Photo-identification Library, a global project to record sightings and images and posted this on the Internet in late 2002.
Planet scale science
More than 650 whale sharks have been added to the database using a technique which ‘maps’ the markings on the skin of each whale shark to enable the accurate identification of individuals.
This is high, planet-scale science. But on another level individual divers worldwide can now follow Brad’s simple guidelines for photographing whale sharks and log their images, activities and locations on the ECOCEAN site.
Everyone can take part in real science. On ECOCEAN, their photos are automatically catalogued, compared and, if possible, identified as belonging to a known individual. Each new image helps Brad compile a global map of where whale sharks live and their migratory patterns. Contributors receive notice by email of all past and further sightings of ‘their’ shark.
Brad won a Rolex Award for Enterprise in 2006 – the first Australian in 25 years – with the prize money he is devoting two years full-time to his project, training local authorities, tourism operators and 20 research assistants around the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans to observe, record and protect whale sharks. In this way he will develop whale shark photography as a significant tool for conservation.
“The whale shark is worth saving – and we can do something about it,” Brad says. “It is a big, beautiful and charismatic animal, and not dangerous. It is a perfect flagship for the health of the oceans.”
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