Spiritual guru’s word saves hundreds of whale shark in Gujarat

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.

“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.

The whale shark, protected and classified as a vulnerable species world wide, migrates from as far as the waters of Australia and Mexico to give birth in the warmth of the Arabian Sea along the Saurashtra coast. They are often found just 1-2 km off the fishing ports of Veraval, Dwarka, Diu, Mangrol and Porbandar.

The rare guests were hunted in the hundreds every year by fishermen who modify their normal fishing boats, arming them with harpoons weighing 8 to 10 kg and ropes tied to half a dozen empty plastic barrels. “The worst part is they would start cutting it alive. The waters of Veraval and Bhidiya harbour used to turn red,” says K Babariya, Veraval range forest officer.

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