To woo tourists to coastal Gujarat, the state is planning to introduce an Australian concept in which expert spotters and air planes will be used to locate whale sharks in the sea.
"Australia has developed a kind of system in which they use air planes and expert spotters to identify places where the whale shark are present at that stage in the sea which is very effective," Principal chief conservator of forests of Gujarat Pradeep Khanna said. A scheduled I animal under the Indian Wildlife (Protection) Act 1972, there are about 500 whale sharks in Indian waters and most of them are spotted largely on the coast of Gujarat.
A team of state forest department, headed by Khanna along with representative of NGO, Wildlife Trust of India, had gone to Australia recently to study satellite tagging of whale shark and also to learn about tourism concerning the mammal to help kick-start a similar process at home.
"We liked the system developed by Australia and it can be implemented here," Khanna said adding "but for it, pilot and spotters are required to be trained." Tourists can be guided to those areas where whale sharks are found by spotters, he said.
"Australia has shown deep interest in developing ties with India for whale shark conservation, satellite tagging and development of tourism related to the mammal," Khanna said.