Helen Chambers
Helen came to
Egypt and Hurghada in January 2004. She is a PADI OW Instructor but
prefers guiding qualified divers rather than teaching diving maybe because she
was teaching students NVQ qualifications for 5 years... enough students. She has
been working as a liveaboard guide on more than 20 different boats and has more
than 90 safaris under her weight belt with over 1200 dives in her "legendary"
logbook which contains weather and water condition reports as well as photos and
guest comments.
Her interest for whale sharks springs
from an amazing encounter with two whale sharks in two days during November 2006
on the Brother Islands. In 2007 she started her project "Whale Shark Awareness
Red Sea". Since then she has spread the word about whale sharks in the Red Sea
and from the 3 on the worldwide wide data base the numbers have increased to
14 photo identified individuals in the Red Sea.
"Scientists and
researchers believe that there maybe only a few thousand whale sharks worldwide;
to see this amazing shark in close proximity is an awesome experience" she says.
By
photographing a whale shark you can directly contribute to a global effort to
better understand and protect these amazing animals? The whale shark is listed
as vulnerable to extinction in the
IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
Photographs showing the distinctive
patterning and scarring on whale sharks are
used to uniquely identify
individuals for long-term, mark-recapture analysis. Resulting population models
can be used by local, regional, and international conservation and management
authorities to understand the pressures on this species and to take specific
action to protect them.
The
most important thing to remember when attempting to photograph a whale shark is
to remain at least 3 meters (10 feet) away from the shark. Touching or blocking
the path of a whale shark may negatively influence its behavior and affect
scientists' ability to photograph it again in the future.
This
type of photograph (or frame grabs from video),
can be used to uniquely identify
individual whale sharks.
This is
the most important type of photograph to us. The left side spot portrait.
Notice that the photographer is perpendicular to the spot patterning area above
the left pectoral fin. photographs of this area at this angle maximize our
ability to use software pattern recognition algorithms to identify this animal
within a catalogue of thousands of images using its unique "body-print" as an
identifier.
Contact
Helen on
info@whalesharkredsea.com
The web
site is still under construction but will be launched shortly at
www.whalesharkredsea.com
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