In 1828, the first whale shark was documented in the Indian Ocean. The species’ first scientific recording and historic records were obtained from the Indian Ocean by Andrew Smith in 1828 and 1829 (Rowat 2007).
Whale sharks live in Australia, Bangladesh, Djibouti, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Madagascar, Malaysia, the Maldives, Mauritius, Mozambique, Seychelles, Somalia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, and Thailand.They can also be found in many places where the water at the top is 18–30°C.
A whale shark was caught in a fishing net in Pulk Bay, a few miles east of Tondi, during the first week of July in 1960. They towed it to Thangachirnadarn’ on Rameswaram Island before exporting it to Sri Lanka. The fish weighed 3123.7 kilograms (excluding cartilaginous skeleton components). The liver alone weighed 93 kg. The flesh was sold at Rs 12/- per maund.
Another whale shark was caught in a fishing net somewhere between Cape Comorin (Tamil Nadu, India) and Colachel on the west coast. The 18-foot whale shark liver was sold for Rs 20/- (Silas, n.d.).
There are two additional archives of whale sharks rammed by streamers in this region. It was in the deep waters off Sri Lanka (E.G., SILAS, n.d.). One specimen was rammed by the Dutch ship Johan van Oldenbarnvelt on 23rd November, 1932, about 150 miles west of Colombo and reported by Gudger (1940). The estimated length of the shark was 7.62 meters.
The other incident was where a specimen was rammed by the Japanese ship S.S. Katori Maru on 10th July, 1944, about 300 miles off Colombo and reported by Deraniyagala (1936). The estimated length of this whale shark was about 12.19 meters.
According to a few studies carried out in the Maldives, Anderson and Ahmed (1993) stated that, in the early days, Maldivian fishermen caught around 20–30 whale sharks a year throughout the Maldives. They used the fish’s liver to treat their boats.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, fishermen caught 30 whale sharks a year. The average length of identifiable sharks was 5.98 m (range 2.5 to 10.5 m). This is shorter than the recorded whale sharks in other aggregations in the Indian Ocean (Riley, S. Hale, Harman, G. Rees, 2010).
