Qatar · Global Whale Shark Program · Since 2011

Qatar Whale Shark Project

Every summer, more than a hundred whale sharks at a time aggregate in an offshore oil field in Qatar to feed on the eggs of spawning tuna.

Led by Qatar Whale Shark Research Project, with MMF

341whale sharks photo-identified at Al Shaheen, 2011–2014

Up to 100sharks feeding together in a single square kilometer (0.4 square miles)

77 daysthe longest continuous stay recorded by acoustic tags

2,644 kmin a straight line, reached by one large female from Qatar to near Socotra (1,643 miles)

Every summer, whale sharks (Rhincodon typus) aggregate in the middle of an offshore oil field in Qatar to feed on the eggs of spawning tuna. Since 2011, the Qatar Whale Shark Research Project has documented the identity, residency, and movements of these sharks, and MMF scientists have contributed to its research.

The Al Shaheen oil field lies about 90 km (56 miles) off Qatar’s northeast coast, in the central Arabian Gulf, where the sea is 50–70 m (160–230 ft) deep. Workers on its platforms had reported large groups of whale sharks since 2007. The Qatar Whale Shark Research Project began in 2011 as a partnership between Qatar’s environment ministry, the field’s operator, and a small group of scientists, led by Dr. David Robinson, who founded the Sharkwatch Arabia citizen-science network in 2010. Working alongside Mohammed Jaidah of the ministry and the operator’s research staff, the team conducted boat surveys, photo-identification, and satellite tagging, and operated an acoustic tracking array, with support from the Qatar Coast Guard. MMF’s Dr. Simon Pierce has co-authored the project’s research since its first paper in 2013, and Dr. Chris Rohner since 2016.

What the project has done

Described the Al Shaheen aggregation for the first time from the 2011 season, showing that the sharks aggregate there to feed on tuna eggs, published in PLOS ONE in 2013.
Photo-identified 422 whale sharks across the Arabian Gulf and Gulf of Oman between 2011 and 2014, 341 of them at Al Shaheen, published in 2016.
Tracked 59 satellite tags fitted to whale sharks at Al Shaheen between 2011 and 2014, mapping the sharks’ movements after they leave the field, published in 2017.
Operated an array of 21 acoustic receivers around the field from 2012 to 2016, monitoring 117 tagged sharks through about 105,000 detections, published in Frontiers in Marine Science in 2025.
Contributed data on Qatar’s sharks to regional and global studies of whale shark movements and connectivity, ship-strike risk, and climate change.

Support whale shark research in the Arabian Seas

The whale sharks of Al Shaheen range across the Arabian Gulf and beyond. Your gift supports our whale shark research in Qatar, Oman, and across the region.

$50 $100 $250 $500

Donate to this projectSecure checkout on Donorbox · one-time or monthly

Research findings

Feeding on tuna eggs

Whale sharks are present at Al Shaheen from April to September, peaking from May to August, and up to 100 have been seen feeding together in a single square kilometer (0.4 square miles). Fish eggs dominated plankton samples taken among the feeding sharks, accounting for 66–77% of the net contents, and DNA barcoding identified them as the eggs of mackerel tuna (Euthynnus affinis). Acoustic tracking, using a network of underwater receivers that detect signals from tagged sharks, revealed a daily cycle: the sharks begin feeding as the eggs float to the surface in the early morning, drift downstream with them through the morning and early afternoon, then swim back against the current in the late afternoon and at night. Most detections came from one small area of the field, indicating that the sharks are targeting a presumed tuna spawning site rather than the platforms themselves. The wider Gulf has more than 800 oil and gas platforms, yet the researchers know of no other where whale sharks are regularly seen.

A whale shark feeds with its mouth open just below the surface off Qatar

Feeding in hot water

The Arabian Gulf is shallow and becomes exceptionally warm in summer. In the hottest months, the top 10 m (33 ft) of water at Al Shaheen can exceed 33 °C (91 °F), yet in August the sharks feed at the surface for more than six hours a day. Tagged sharks spent about two-thirds of their time in water of 24–30 °C (75–86 °F), moving deeper and into cooler water at night. These conditions make the Gulf’s sharks important for understanding how whale sharks will cope as the oceans warm. A 2024 study of whale sharks satellite-tracked around the Indian Ocean projected that, under a high-emissions scenario, sea-surface temperatures in the Arabian Gulf will rise by 4.9 °C (8.8 °F) by 2100, the largest increase of the four regions studied, to as much as 33.4 °C (92.1 °F).

Size, sex, and maturity

Photo-identification, based on each shark’s unique spot pattern, recorded 341 individuals at Al Shaheen between 2011 and 2014. They ranged from 4 to 10 m (13 to 33 ft) long, averaging about 6.9 m (22.6 ft), and 69% of those whose sex could be determined were male. Most males were mature, which made Al Shaheen the first whale shark aggregation known to be dominated by adult males, in contrast to most aggregations elsewhere, which consist mainly of young males. Two females longer than 9 m (30 ft) were visually assessed as pregnant, the first free-swimming pregnant whale sharks reported from the Indian Ocean.

A whale shark swims just below the surface off Qatar

Residency and return

An estimated 124 sharks were present in the field on any one day during the season. Acoustic tags recorded continuous stays of up to 77 days, with half of the tagged sharks remaining for two weeks or more. Residency at Al Shaheen is longer than at other well-studied sites, including Ningaloo Reef in Australia and St Helena in the Atlantic, and the largest sharks, 8 m (26 ft) and over, were the most resident of all. Many sharks also return: of those fitted with satellite tags and also photographed, 58% returned in later years.

Movements beyond Qatar

At the end of the season, the sharks disperse into deeper water across the Gulf for the winter, and every shark still carrying a tag after the season moved into the waters of Saudi Arabia, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, or Oman. Nine left the Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz, and one large female, thought to be pregnant, crossed five maritime boundaries in 37 days to reach waters near Socotra, about 2,644 km (1,643 miles) away. The tracks also point to a likely second feeding site in Saudi waters, about 126 km (78 miles) from Al Shaheen. Photo-identification links Al Shaheen with the Musandam Peninsula and the Daymaniyat Islands in Oman, up to 828 km (514 miles) apart, but not with the whale sharks of Mozambique or Tanzania. A 2018 study led by MMF’s Dr. Clare Prebble found the same separation in the sharks’ chemistry: the nitrogen and carbon signatures in their tissue suggested that sharks at Al Shaheen, Mozambique, and Tanzania had each stayed within a few hundred kilometers of their own site. The authors concluded that whale sharks may form regional subpopulations, which conservation assessments should consider managing separately. Effective protection for these sharks will therefore require countries across the region to work together.

A sanctuary by accident

Vessel access to Al Shaheen is restricted, and boats must remain 500 m (1,600 ft) away from its platforms. As a result, the field appears to function as an unintended sanctuary for the whale sharks, and probably favors the tuna that spawn there too. Al Shaheen is now recognized as an Important Shark and Ray Area, a habitat assessed against global scientific criteria as critical for sharks and rays, although the designation is not itself a legal protection. The sanctuary does not, however, remove the threat of vessel strikes: of the sharks identified during a single survey in May 2011, three carried significant scars, two of them propeller marks from boat strikes. A 2024 global study named Al Shaheen among the aggregations that most urgently need measures to reduce collisions between ships and whale sharks, an opportunity to make the sanctuary safer still.