World Oceans day and The National Shark Awareness Week - two different events with common topic - marine ecosystems, sharks, coral reefs, and how the inhabitants of the country without their "own" sea can help them. It was our pleasure to talk to the visitors of our stand on these topics during the weekend from 1st to 2nd June 2019. 

The donation from our visitors, 1007 CZK + 0.5 EUR, rounded to 50 USD, was transferred to WildAid organization, namely for conservation of the ecosystems in PECCA (Tanzania). On top of that, the sponsor of WildAid organization has doubled the donation to 100 USD! Many thanks to our donors!

The southern tip of South Ari Atoll is a 12km stretch of reef that hosts whale sharks year round - unlike most other Whale Sharks hotspots around the world, which are seasonal and usually coincide with feeding opportunities such as a coral or fish spawning events. It was declared a Marine Protected Area in 2009 and attracts a large and growing number of visitors. The Maldives Whale Shark Research Programme (MWSRP) is a long term monitoring program that began in 2006 and has since had over 1000 separate Whale Shark encounters. Using a technique called photo-identification, which uses images of the shark's unique spot patterns as "fingerprints", over 170 different individual sharks have been identified. The number of "known" versus "new" sharks has enabled researchers to estimate how many whale sharks are in these waters at any one time - surprisingly few with less than 200 estimated to be in South Ari waters at any one time.