ASIATODAY.ID, JAKARTA – The whale shark population in the Cenderawasih Bay National Park (TNTC) area, Kwatisore, Nabire Regency, Central Papua continues to increase.
The Ministry of Environment and Forestry noted that by May 2024 the whale shark population in the area had reached 203 individuals.
Habitat Ecosystem Controller for the Management Section of TNTC Region 1 Kwatisore, Sumaryono, said that the initial data for the Whale Shark population was 195 individuals, but after joint monitoring in November 2023, his party recorded the presence of new individuals, bringing the number to 203 Whale Sharks as of May 2024.
“We hope that in the future the Whale Shark population can continue to increase,” he said, Thursday, June 13 2024.
Sumaryono said that conservation efforts for whale sharks, apart from the monitoring program, also include the process of tagging whale sharks to record and process data on their behavior in the waters.
“One of the uses of data is to study the migration routes of whale sharks in the Papua sea area so that from this data we will adjust it to the shipping area of PT Pertamina International Shipping (PIS) ships in the Papua region,” he said.
He explained that with data on whale shark migration routes, it is hoped that ship schedules sailing on these routes will not interfere with the migration of these protected mammals.
“We hope that this data can be accessed by other ships to protect the marine ecosystem,” he said. Based on data from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), currently the whale shark is one of the animals that has been threatened with extinction since 2016. (ATN)
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