Conservation
ECOCEAN has been at the forefront of whale shark conservation for more than 30 years, helping turn scientific knowledge into real protection for the world’s largest fish.
When ECOCEAN began its work in the 1990s, remarkably little was known about the world’s largest fish. Since then, our research and conservation efforts have helped build the scientific case for stronger protection of whale sharks in Australia and around the world.
ECOCEAN founder Dr Brad Norman prepared the Species Report for the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species that saw the whale shark’s global conservation status upgraded from Indeterminate to Vulnerable in 2000. He subsequently contributed to the 2016 and 2025 assessments, which recognise the whale shark as Endangered — just two steps away from extinction in the wild.
Brad also played a leading role in securing legal protection for whale sharks in Australia and internationally. His research and conservation advocacy contributed to the whale shark being protected under Australia’s Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act, and led to international protection through the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) and the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS). These listings helped strengthen protection from exploitation and recognised that conserving a highly migratory species requires cooperation between countries.
Today, whale sharks are protected in many parts of their range, but they continue to face significant threats. Targeted hunting and fisheries bycatch still occur in some regions, while their long-distance migrations can take them beyond protected waters into areas where they are vulnerable. Ship strikes, fisheries interactions, marine pollution and climate-driven changes to ocean productivity and prey availability add further pressures. ECOCEAN scientists contribute to ongoing research that highlights these issues.
But despite decades of research around the world, some of the most fundamental parts of the whale shark’s life remain a mystery. We still do not know where whale sharks mate or give birth.
Understanding these critical parts of their life cycle, where whale sharks go, how populations are connected, where they are most at risk and what they need to survive is essential if we are to protect the species into the future.
ECOCEAN scientists conduct and contribute to ongoing research that highlights these issues – see our scientific publications.
NINGALOO WHALE SHARK POPULATION
Ningaloo Reef is home to one of the world’s largest aggregations (or “constellations” as they are known) of whale sharks and is one of the best places to encounter whale sharks in the wild. It is also where ECOCEAN’s whale shark story began.
Stretching for around 300 kilometres along Western Australia’s coast, the Ningaloo Reef supports an extraordinary diversity of marine life, including corals, turtles, manta rays, dugongs and migrating humpback whales. But it is the annual gathering of whale sharks that has made Ningaloo internationally renowned.
ECOCEAN founder Dr Brad Norman began studying Ningaloo’s whale sharks in the mid-1990s, pioneering the use of their unique spot patterns to identify and follow individual sharks over time. That work developed into the ECOCEAN Whale Shark Photo-identification Library (now Sharkbook: Wildbook for Whale Sharks), and has become one of the world’s longest-running studies of any wild shark population.
Since then, more than 2,500 individual whale sharks have been identified at Ningaloo, with some animals returning over many years. Photographs contributed by researchers, tourism operators and members of the public have enabled individual sharks to be recognised and their sighting histories followed through time—creating an extraordinary long-term record of the population using Ningaloo.
SCIENCE SUPPORTING SUSTAINABLE WHALE SHARK TOURISM
Ningaloo’s whale sharks support a highly regulated and well managed whale shark tourism industry that operates during autumn and winter. A major focus of ECOCEAN’s work has been ensuring that people can experience these extraordinary animals without compromising their welfare or natural behaviour.
ECOCEAN contributed to the early development of the guidelines governing how people and vessels interact with whale sharks at Ningaloo and recently conducted an assessment of the effects of tourism on whale sharks using high-resolution behavioural datalogging tags called ‘Daily Diaries’. This confirmed that swimming with humans had minimal impact on whale sharks at Ningaloo and provides support for calls to introduce greater regulation of whale shark tourism in other places around the world.
Ningaloo demonstrates that research, conservation and carefully managed wildlife tourism can work together. The thousands of photographs and sightings contributed by the tourism industry and visitors have also become part of the long-term scientific record, turning encounters with whale sharks into information that can help protect them.
For ECOCEAN, Ningaloo is both where our whale shark research began and a living example of how long-term science can contribute directly to conservation and sustainable wildlife tourism.
