Blue Guru has conducted research into sightings of sharks, rays, turtles & fishing boats in Surin National Park for the past 3 years. Here are the results from last season (Nov'14-Apr'15).

Shark sightings were down to 10% of dives, compared to 22% of dives in previous season & 12% in 2012/13. Sharks seen last season included 7 whale sharks, 16 black tips & 3 white tip reef sharks. Based on longitudinal analysis, it looks like the previous season was unusually good for shark sightings with an incredible 17 whale sharks, 56 black tips, 6 white tips & 4 grey reef sharks. Good news is that Surin Islands is still a nursery for juvenile black tip reef sharks. Thanks to Lars Hestbaek for this amazing photo taken in the mangroves.

Ray sightings increased to 14% of dives, compared to 10% of dives in previous season & 8% in 2012/13. Rays seen included manta, eagle, Jenkin's whipray, pink whipray, Kuhl's stingray & common stingray. Still a great diversity, although no sightings of marble or honeycomb whiprays this year.

Last season we increased our research project scope to include monitoring turtle numbers. Turtles were seen on 17% of dives. This included 30 hawksbills & 13 green turtles. Most turtles seen were solitary but the highest number of turtles seen on one dive was 7! 

Sadly fishing boat sightings increased to average 2.5 fishing boats per dive site, compared to 1.5 per dive site in 2013/14 and 1.9 per dive site in 2012/13. Furthermore it was upsetting that despite a ban on all fishing boats in the Andaman Sea from April-June, we still saw fishing boats close to Richelieu Rock in April without any action being taken against the offending boats.

Richelieu Rock is Thailand's top dive site and famous for whale shark sightings. Blue Guru submitted data & photos on a whale shark seen there on 9th April. It was extremely exciting to receive not 1 but 6 updates of subsequent sightings of the same whale shark over the next 3 weeks, all at Richelieu Rock! This is a tremendous finding. Whale sharks are not just migrating past Richelieu Rock but stopping off to feed for weeks at a time.

Until now Blue Guru has been one of the only operators in the Andaman Sea reporting whale shark sightings to Wildbook, so it is great that more individuals are now starting to submit their sightings too. If everyone diving in the Andaman Sea submitted data on sightings of all whale sharks, manta rays & turtles, we could learn so much more about the true population sizes of these endangered species & the migration patterns of whale sharks & manta rays. If you are interested in supporting such research efforts, please submit your sightings data to:

- www.whaleshark.org

- www.mantamatcher.org

- www.seaturtle.org

- www.sharkguardian.org

Blue Guru's Ocean Action Project research is integrated in our daily operations and relies on our staff recording sightings data on every dive & snorkel session conducted throughout the season. All our data is also submitted to Shark Guardian's Thailand eShark project to support their national research. A big thank you to our eco-tourism interns who undertook all database entry this year: that's data entry for 259 dives & opinions from 300 customers!