For a fisherman, nothing is perhaps more painful than to let go of a big catch with his own hands, especially if it happens to be a 30-ft whale shark that would fetch at least Rs 80,000.

But that’s exactly what fishermen of Saurashtra are doing — often cutting their expensive nets and releasing the whale shark they once butchered by the hundreds as the gentle giants came to breed in the warm waters of the Arabian Sea.

On the face of it, behind this change of heart is a ban on hunting whale sharks. But the fishermen couldn’t have cared less for the law if not for one man’s word of faith, Morari Bapu’s.

One day in 2003, the guru ventured into the sea off Dwarka and blessed a whale shark entangled in a net and said he wished the creature was left alone. The killings stopped almost immediately.

This was two years after the Central government ban on killing whale shark in 2001, and the forest department was struggling to implement it. Every year, at least 250 whale sharks were killed along the Saurashtra coast.

But Morari Bapu, famous for his Ram kathas, knew that in spite of a large following among the fishing communities even his word was not enough. He decided to combine his preaching with the strict laws for whale shark protection to convince the fishermen against hunting.

“Whale sharks come to Saurashtra coast to give birth and end up getting brutally killed. I reasoned with the fishermen by comparing the whale shark with a daughter who comes home to give birth. Instead of death we should give them respect,’’ the soft-spoken guru told The Indian Express.

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