Two years beneath the surface – what’s been found?
The waters around Alphonse Island have always held more than most people see. Two years ago, the island conservation team set out to find out exactly what. Here’s a brief overview of the findings:
Through the Alphonse Shark Project, led by Island Conservation Society and the Alphonse Foundation in partnership with Blue Safari, Save Our Seas Foundation, D’Arros Research Centre, and the University of Western Australia, we’ve spent two years tagging sharks, deploying underwater cameras, and collecting DNA samples across the Alphonse Group. The fieldwork stage is now complete: 50 tagged sharks across five species groups, 248,529 acoustic detections, and faecal DNA samples from over 100 sharks currently under analysis.
Among interesting preliminary findings are lemon sharks that have lived their whole lives within the lagoon, some detected daily for an entire year without leaving the atoll group. Whitespotted wedgefish that barely moved more than one to two kilometres in three months. Tiger sharks tracing seagrass corridors that mirror the movements of the green turtles they prey on. And, in a single season, a first recorded sighting of a short-finned Mako shark for the Alphonse Group, and only the third time orca have appeared in the University of Western Australia’s Marine Futures Lab database, which spans seven ocean basins.
The lemon shark findings have already shaped policy: this data directly supported the 2024 designation of St François lagoon as an Important Sharks and Rays Area. The wedgefish data is the first of its kind anywhere on how this critically endangered species uses atoll habitat.
If you’ve ever stood at the edge of this water and wondered what’s moving beneath it, this is where to start. The full report can be found HERE.
If you are interested in visiting Alphonse Island and would like more information on this stunning location please contact Charlotte Chilcott or Peter McLeod or call us on +44 1980 847389.
