In-water observations highlight the effects of provisioning on whale shark behaviour at the world's largest whale shark tourism destination.

ABSTRACT: The whale shark is the world's largest fish that forms predictable aggregations across its range, many of which support tourism industries. The largest non-captive provisioned whale shark destination globally is at Oslob, Philippines, where more than 500 000 tourists visit yearly. There, the sharks are provisioned daily, year-round, allowing the human-shark interaction in nearshore waters. We used in-water behavioural observations of whale sharks between 2015 and 2017 to understand the relationship between external stimuli and shark behaviour, whether frequency of visits at the site can act as a predictor of behaviour, and the tourist compliance to the code of conduct. Mixed effects models revealed that the number of previous visits at the site was a strong predictor of whale shark behavio

SUBMITTER: Legaspi C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7813242 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature