By Bittu Sahgal
Three very different people sat sipping tea together at the Tea Centre at Churchgate Station, Mumbai, early in the year 2001. I had set up a meeting between two very good friends, the late Bhai Bhandarkar, leader of the Maharashtra Machhimar Kruti Samiti (Maharashtra Fishworkers’ Forum) and Mike Pandey, a wildlife filmmaker par excellence. Mike had just won the Green Oscar for his heart-wrenching documentary, The Shores of Silence, on the plight of the whale shark Rhincodon typus, and I wanted the three of us to watch the film together. Post the film, and after much discussion, Bhai Bhandarkar said he would speak with India’s National Fishworkers’ Forum to explain that it would be in the best interest of fisherfolk to stop the slaughter and become protectors of the world’s largest shark – which, as a filter feeder, survives on some of the smallest lifeforms of the ocean!
Post the screening, Mike explained how the fishing communities could earn more from people wanting to watch or swim with the peaceful sharks, than kill them for little more than the value of the oil used to waterproof hulls of wooden fishing craft!
In the event, the film did its real job! The politicians of the day cooperated. The fishing community threw its weight behind protection of the largest fish in the world. And, though Rhincodon typus still has a slew of problems, its global extinction on account of targeted killing seems to have been warded off, for now.
Acclaimed underwater photographer Sumer Verma braved strong currents to capture this stunning image of a diver swimming alongside the magnificent whale shark in Oslob, Philippines.
But our battle to save the whale shark is far from won. We humans have proven to be the worst ‘planet managers’ since the beginning of life on Earth, as the manufacturers of the most dangerous weapon of mass destruction the planet has ever seen: the climate crisis.
While our focus has been on measurement of land and air temperatures, the oceans, according to Earth System Science Data, have quietly been absorbing a whopping 89 per cent of Earth’s heat inventory, while the remaining six per cent is stored by land, one per cent by the atmosphere and four per cent by the cryosphere (snow and ice locked up in ice shelves, lakes, icebergs, glaciers, the poles, and permafrost).
The long and short of it is, we are literally cooking the whale sharks and their food supplies, together with all other life forms – including ourselves. And we have the temerity to christen ourselves Homo sapiens… ‘the wise ones’!
Photographer: Sumer Verma
Location: Oslob, Philippines
Details: Camera: Canon EOS 5D Lens: Canon EF 16-35 mm, f/2.8L II USM, Aperture: f/22, Shutter speed: 1/250 sec., ISO: 250, Focal length: 16 mm.
Date: April 28, 2016, 9:37 a.m.
