Season update

Despite challenging conditions and a continued decline in whale shark sightings, the team carried out an intensive field season focused on research, conservation, and local engagement. Scientific research expanded in exciting new directions in 2025. Aboard Ad Astra, we continued […]

2024 was a hard one! This year marked our seventh field season. We were finally able to work directly from our research boat, Ad Astra, which made such a difference. Thanks to our volunteers, we were able to collect photo […]

We are so happy to finally introduce you to our new boat, AD ASTRA, a 9.8 motorboat fully equipped for research. Its name means ‘ towards the stars “ because in Madagascar, whale sharks translate as ” many stars ’! This would not […]

Here we go! A little summary of our 2023 season. This year was particularly unusual, and our scientific activities were not as successful as usual. The unpredictable presence of whale sharks and the high number of boats at sea made […]

For 2023 we decided to head to Nosy Be earlier in the year than we normally would to allow us to spend some time on operator training ahead of the whale shark season. This is becoming a major focus as tourism […]

After two years away, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we were relieved and excited to be able to return to the field for our 2022 season. We weren’t quite sure what to expect after such a long time away – […]

Hi everyone, As I wrap up the season here in Nosy Be and feel the familiar bittersweet nostalgia closing in, I wanted to share what we’ve been up to over the last few months-a full end of season report is […]

🇬🇧 And the whale sharks are here 🥳   After the 2019 season ended, like everyone we got caught in the pandemic chaos, and continuing our research efforts on-site has been challenging. We are so excited to be finally back […]

Sadly, due to the pandemic we couldn’t return to Madagascar to run our field season like every year from September to December. While we had big plans for this year (acoustic tagging, community projects…), the situation escalated quickly and we […]

This year, again, was rather unusual. Unlike last year when they arrived in October, this season whale sharks started showing up in August already. This shift is probably due to warming sea surface temperatures, meaning the food source whale sharks […]