The StAR Project, which has been breeding and releasing Indo-Pacific leopard sharks in Indonesia, has now opened a nursery in Phuket. Image courtesy of ReShark.
Conservationist Ying Pemika Choovanichchanon holds a small basket in her hands, careful not to disturb the leathery brown pouches nestled inside. When she shines a light underneath, signs of life appear: the pouches are bamboo shark egg cases, and the tiny creatures within them are a key part of a plan to help revive Thailand’s coral reefs.
At the forefront of this plan is Oceans for All, a Thai-based nonprofit that’s partnering with luxury hotels to breed and release bamboo sharks.
After opening its first shark nursery with Club Med Phuket in March 2022, followed by Pullman Phuket Panwa Beach Resort in November 2022, the program has now expanded to the Thai mainland by opening a shark nursery at the JW Marriott Khao Lak Resort & Spa on the shores of the Andaman Sea.
Twenty years ago, Thai waters were filled with the tan-colored bamboo sharks (Chiloscyllium punctatum), famed for their distinctive dark bands. But overfishing and habitat destruction have seen their numbers drop drastically. The sharks, which are listed as near threatened on the IUCN Red List, play a vital role in the ecosystem, by feeding on small fish and invertebrates that eat corals.
As apex predators, bamboo sharks keep in check populations of smaller creatures that might otherwise overgraze the reefs. The Oceans for All team say that when shallow reefs die, it’s often due to the lack of predators rather than pollution.
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A coral reef in Thailand. Image by Umeed Mistry / Ocean Image Bank.
National Geographic filmmaker David Martin, who has lived in Phuket for 25 years, has watched the numbers of sharks erode over the decades. Trained as a marine biologist, Martin says he wanted to see what could be done to protect the sharks in his adopted home. In 2018, he and entrepreneur Thibault Salaun, with the help of the local community, launched Oceans for All, a nonprofit that would help protect the coral reefs by rewilding sharks.
To show they were serious, they started to raise awareness of the reefs by launching a coffee table book, creating a seagrass nursery after scouring the shoreline for seeds at low tide, and then raising $30,000 in funds to purchase a trash-collecting catamaran that now cruises along the coast of Phuket. This has since been joined by four further floating trash collectors made from recycled plastic, which together collect nearly 66 cubic meters (2,315 cubic feet) of plastic trash each month.
In 2020, Oceans for All joined with the researchers at the Phuket Marine Biological Center (PMBC) for an even more ambitious project: to breed and release brown-banded bamboo sharks, starting by creating a breeding pair from two sharks that had been caught in fishers’ nets.
The bamboo shark, which can live up to 25 years, is one of the 40% of shark species that lays eggs, making them relatively easy to breed in captivity. Reaching up to a meter (3 feet) in length, the sharks are also small enough to be raised to maturity in aquariums, though the team has chosen to release pups when they’re 6 months old and about 10 inches in length. At this stage, they’re large enough to have good odds of survival, but not yet too reliant on being fed by humans.
The creation of the nurseries brought its challenges. At first it was thought the pups would like the open air, but this proved too hot and the sharks’ appetite faltered. Now the sharks live in temperature-controlled tanks, filled with water from the Andaman Sea and monitored for bacteria that could harm the sharks.
Since Oceans for All launched, it has released 200 sharks. “We’ve been releasing sharks from the beach, from a boat, [but] they will find their place,” Martin says. “They hide under corals, and they will feed at night on small fish and small shrimp.”
However, bamboo sharks aren’t protected in Thailand. If fishers were to catch the newly released sharks in their nets, they would not break the law. “There’s no penalty,” Martin says.
Despite the lack of protection for the species, Martin says it was important to make a start. “If there’s not the awareness, then the nothing change because no one will care,” he says.
The decision to establish the nurseries on the grounds of existing hotels was a deliberate one. “In a hotel, you have different people coming every three or four days. The awareness is spreading a lot faster, almost as fast as if you do it on social media,” Martin says.
“Science and technology cannot fix the ocean. Science and technology cannot fix plastic pollution. Science and technology cannot fix overfishing. Only a moral change [can do it],” he says.
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Sharks being tagged before release. Image courtesy of Oceans for All.
Working with hotels also comes with financial benefits. The JW Marriott Khao Lak supports the entire cost of operating the shark nursery there. It also encourages each of its guests to donate $1 to the program when they check out.
“If you think about it, when you take the highway, you stop at the toll. That money is used to maintain the highway,” Martin says. “The ocean is absolutely free of charge [and] it’s the best asset ever. But there is no regulation [that] forces a property, a hotel, a yachting [company] to do something for the ocean because they use it. Ninety percent of our supporters are from the hospitality industry because that makes sense.”
Changing minds
Choovanichchanon, the shark nursery officer at Oceans for All, was born in the coastal town of Khao Lak. She nurtures the sharks from eggs until they’re ready for release, buying fresh tuna for them from the market and mincing it like steak tartare to make it easier for younger sharks to eat.
Each day at the nursery at the JW Marriott Khao Lak, she leads guided talks for visitors. She says her favorite part of the job is watching the reaction on the faces of the children at the end of each talk. “You can see them change,” she says.
Choovanichchanon says people in the community she grew up in value bamboo sharks as food, because their size and lack of bones mean one shark can feed a family. But catching and eating the sharks, she tries to teach people, is harmful to both the reef and to human health. “Shark is not good to eat. [It’s full of] mercury. [They’re not] born for human food. They are born to take care of the ocean. If [we] don’t have sharks, the coral can’t grow,” she says.
Other rewilding efforts
Oceans for All isn’t the only team helping to rewild Thailand’s waters with sharks. The StAR Project, which has been breeding and releasing Indo-Pacific leopard sharks (Stegostoma tigrinum) in Indonesia’s Raja Ampat archipelago, has now opened a nursery in Phuket. Nine young leopard sharks currently live in an oversized sea pen off the coast, where they’re learning to forage for food and build survival skills before they can be released into the wild.
These spotted, silver-skinned sharks were once a familiar sight in Thai waters, says marine scientist Petch Manopawitr, a member of StAR Project Thailand and technical adviser to WildAid, the NGO behind an anti-shark fin campaign and a citizen science leopard shark spotting program.
The decision to reintroduce leopard sharks to Phuket was boosted by the Thai government’s initial approval in May 2024, when it added leopard sharks to the list of protected species under the country’s Wildlife Conservation and Protection Act.
The leopard sharks were bred at Aquaria Phuket, the country’s largest aquarium. Then the pups, aged 2-12 months, were transported to Koh Maiton, a private island off the coast of Phuket. Once a tourist hotspot, the island has remained closed since the COVID-19 pandemic and is home to a thriving artificial reef.
Here, the team has placed the aquarium-born leopard sharks in sea pen, giving them a chance to acclimate to the natural environment before their release. The baby sharks, which can each eat up to 5 kilograms (11 pounds) of shellfish daily, are learning how to hunt for food. They currently measure up to 1.1 m (3.6 ft), and can grow up to 2.4 m (7.9 feet).
Before their release, the leopard sharks will be fitted with tiny acoustic tags so that ReShark, the conservation outfit behind the StAR project, can monitor their movements.
“Breeding programmes serve as useful educational opportunities for public and scientists and [raise awareness] of the importance of top predators in coral reef trophic structures,” says Maeve Nightingale, head of the coastal and marine program at the Asia regional office of the IUCN, the global wildlife conservation authority.
But she adds the sharks’ survival requires an abundance of prey: “Releasing shark[s] into reef ecosystems needs to be carefully planned to ensure high survival rates and avoid disruption to ecology of the reef.”
The Thai government has shown it can successfully manage a reef. Each year it closes Maya Bay in the Phi Phi Islands from Aug. 1 to Oct. 1. After serving as the location for the 2000 Hollywood movie The Beach, the bay saw a surge in visitor numbers, up to 5,000 people per day, that strained the local ecosystem. Authorities first closed the bay for four months in 2018 to give the reef time to recover. This proved so effective that the bay is now closed for two months each year after the peak tourist season. Since the closures were first implemented, coral restoration projects in the area have thrived, as has the population of black-tip reef sharks (Carcharhinus melanopterus).
Manopawitr says Maya Bay gives her hope. “I feel like [the sharks] making the comeback is actually very possible, if [we] will give them a chance,” she says.
Tim Schwab’s family has owned a dive company in Phuket for 30 years, with a presence in both Khao Lak and Phuket. Schwab started scuba diving at the age of 10 and has seen changes on the reef since then: as a child, he recalls, it wasn’t unusual for him to see the tail of a leopard shark swoosh past his face. But he says such sightings are now rare.
He says he has, however, seen the resurgence of bamboo sharks. “Every time we go Koh Dok Mai and King Cruiser Wreck, we usually always see a bamboo shark,” Schwab says.
“In the last couple of years, the national park authorities in the Similans and in Phi Phi Island have become much stricter, and we’ve been seeing the benefits of that. Because in cases like Maya Bay and Phi Phi Island, the blacktip [reef] shark population has rebounded,” Schwab adds.
He says he thinks the rewilding schemes are a good trend in the right direction, but also calls for a more holistic approach. “I think you’ll see the biggest rebound in shark population when tourist companies become more educated on how to dive at these dive sites [and] if there’s more regulation surrounding fishing zones. I think rewilding projects are a good start, but you [need] the environment that allows them to thrive,” Schwab says.
Martin from Oceans for All is now seeking funding to launch a coral farm in Phuket, while StAR is looking at opening a second leopard shark nursery in the Gulf of Thailand, on the other side of the country.
Manopawitr says they’re clear about the task that lies ahead of them. The goal for the rewilding programs is to help Thailand’s sharks flourish. “It’s not just [about] trying to protect the last remaining individual,” Manopawitr says. “We want to show nature making [a] comeback.”
This article was originally published on Mongabay under the Creative Commons BY NC ND licence. Read the original article.
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