The Better India · 6 days ago

Shores of Silence & Wildlife Trust of India’s Whale Shark Campaign Ensured the Fish Protection Along Gujarat’s Coast

Along Gujarat's coast, fishermen once hunted whale sharks for profit, earning up to Rs 1,50,000 per kill and using their liver oil to waterproof boats-until a documentary and a simple analogy changed everything. When officials and spiritual leaders told them the whale shark was "like a deer in the forest," harmless and undeserving of harm, the same communities who tracked these giants by their starlike patterns began protecting them instead. Today, through the Wildlife Trust of India's conservation project, these fishermen rescue entangled whale sharks at their own expense, cutting their nets to free the animals, while young people like Mohit Bamaniya-whose father once hunted the species-now work as field biologists tagging and studying them. The transformation has been complete: awareness among fishing communities has risen from 19 percent in 2005 to nearly 100 percent today, with 1,029 whale sharks rescued and returned to the sea. What began with Mike Pandey's film *Shores of Silence* and a childhood promise to a dying creature has become a living network of care, proving that even the deepest patterns of harm can be rewritten when people learn to see differently.