Mozambique · Global Whale Shark Program · Since 2005

Mozambique Whale Shark Project

Southern Mozambique is one of the world's most important whale shark feeding areas, and we have studied the sharks here since 2005 to understand and protect them.

About 800individual whale sharks identified in Mozambican waters

87%decline in whale shark sightings off Praia do Tofo, 2005–2019

4Important Shark & Ray Areas in Mozambique built on MMF research

20+peer-reviewed papers on whale sharks in Mozambique

Southern Mozambique is a global center of abundance for whale sharks (Rhincodon typus), the world’s largest fish, and one of the world’s most important whale shark feeding areas.

Since 2005, we have documented the largest identified populations of these endangered giants in Africa. The most sightings are recorded along the coast of Inhambane Province, an important feeding area for juvenile whale sharks. The project builds on the long-term research Dr. Simon Pierce began here in 2005. It is led by MMF’s Dr. Clare Prebble, working with Simon and Dr. Chris Rohner, who joined the work in 2009. Our now-global whale shark research began here, and that early work in Inhambane Province pioneered many of the research techniques now in routine use around the world. In 2021, the species received full legislative protection in Mozambique.

Objectives

Monitor Mozambique’s whale shark populations.
Develop sustainable shark ecotourism.
Identify and address the species’ conservation needs.

The coast near Tofo, Inhambane Province, Mozambique, from the air

What we've done

Our extensive research and lobbying in Mozambique was a major factor in the legal protection of whale sharks by the Mozambican government in January 2021.
Our long-term sightings, aerial-survey, and tagging data were instrumental in the designation of four Important Shark & Ray Areas (ISRAs, habitats assessed against global scientific criteria as critical for sharks and rays) along the Mozambican coast: the Greater Bazaruto area, Pomene, southern Inhambane Province (Tofo and Závora), and a southern Mozambique movement corridor. They were identified at the 2023 Western Indian Ocean regional workshop.
Our whale shark photo-identification databases are the largest and longest-running in Africa.
Our researchers have authored more than 20 peer-reviewed scientific papers, two PhD theses, and an MSc thesis on whale sharks in Mozambique.
We have contributed to the current management plans for several marine protected areas, including the Bazaruto Archipelago National Park.

What's next

Continue population monitoring and threat assessment, so that our conservation efforts support the recovery of the regional whale shark population.
Once export permits are in place, include tissue samples from Mozambique in a multi-site study of whale shark diet at feeding areas across the Indian Ocean. The study measures chemical signatures in amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, to determine an animal’s position in its food web. With support from the British Ecological Society, MMF’s Dr. Clare Prebble trained in the method in 2025 at CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, in Hobart.

Help Mozambique's whale sharks recover

Donations to the Global Whale Shark Program fund the fieldwork, community work, and government engagement described on this page, and sustain our long-term monitoring of Mozambique's whale sharks.

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Our work on whale sharks in Mozambique

Identity and movements

Photo-identification has recorded about 800 individual whale sharks in Mozambican waters, some of which have been resighted in South Africa and, to the north, in Tanzania. Our satellite-tracking work has shown that whale sharks preferentially use the productive coastal waters from the Bazaruto Seascape south to Závora, with some individuals returning for many years to this important feeding area. Of 15 juveniles tagged off Tofo and tracked for 2 to 88 days, all stayed within the southern Mozambique Channel and eastern South African waters, and about half stayed on the shelf near the coast. They favored cooler, shallower water with higher chlorophyll concentrations, a marker of productive water, which suggests that feeding drives their use of this coast. A 2018 comparison of the Mozambique, Tanzania, and Qatar photo-identification catalogs found negligible overlap, and the chemical signatures in the sharks’ tissue indicated that they had stayed within a few hundred kilometers of each site over the months those signatures reflect. Whale sharks in this region may therefore form subpopulations over smaller areas than once assumed, so protecting this coast matters in its own right. In 2025, two whale sharks sighted during our shark and ray surveys off the San Sebastian Peninsula, north of Tofo, matched individuals already recorded at Tofo.

Most of the sharks here are immature males. Using laser photogrammetry, a measuring technique our team adapted for whale sharks at Tofo in which two parallel laser beams project a scale onto the shark’s flank, we measured 122 sharks with a mean length of 6.7 m (22 ft). Of these, 74% were male, and 98% of the males were immature.

A juvenile whale shark carrying a satellite tag off Praia do Tofo, Mozambique

A steep decline off Tofo

Whale shark sightings declined substantially over the course of MMF’s work on the species, highlighting the urgent need for conservation assessment and planning. An earlier analysis, published in 2013, found a 79% decline in standardized sightings between 2005 and 2011. In 2025, a team led by MMF’s Lisa-Marie Auditore published the full 15-year picture: using records of 706 photo-identified whale sharks off Praia do Tofo between 2005 and 2019, the study documented an 87% decline in sightings and an estimated 89% decline in abundance at one of the largest whale shark aggregations in the world. Abundance fell most sharply among larger sharks, and females declined faster than males.

What the sharks eat

Stomach contents from five stranded whale sharks, three in southern Mozambique and two in neighboring South Africa, were dominated by mysids in three cases. Mysids are small shrimp-like crustaceans that live near the seabed by day and rise into the water column at night, which suggests that the sharks also feed after dark. Fatty acids in the sharks’ tissue, which carry a longer-term record of diet, suggested a second food source: deep-water zooplankton and small fishes, likely taken in oceanic waters during long-distance movements, rather than coastal surface plankton alone. A 2025 study led by Dr. Clare Prebble applied stable isotopes, the chemical signatures that place an animal in its food web, to whale sharks at Mafia Island in Tanzania and found that they feed mainly within the local food web.

Tourism and the code of conduct

Observations on 137 commercial snorkeling trips from Tofo, published in 2010, provided the basis for a recommended code of conduct for whale shark encounters there. No avoidance responses were recorded when boats stayed more than 20 m (66 ft) from the sharks, and in-water interactions lasted almost nine minutes on average. A follow-up study of 689 encounters between 2008 and 2010 found that sharks showed avoidance behavior in about two-thirds of encounters, which shortened them. Neither the frequency of avoidance nor encounter length changed over the two and a half years, and the authors suggested that the transient, non-breeding status of the sharks here may limit the effects of tourism.

A whale shark feeding at the surface off southern Mozambique

National and international protection

Our findings have directly informed conservation assessment and planning. The global listing of the whale shark as an Endangered species on the IUCN Red List was based partly on our Mozambique research, and we led the subsequent technical proposal that successfully uplisted whale sharks to Appendix I on the UN Convention on Migratory Species, conferring a responsibility on range states to fully protect the species and its important habitats. Whale sharks received full legislative protection in Mozambique in 2021.

In November 2025, at the 20th Conference of the Parties to CITES, whale sharks were moved from Appendix II to Appendix I, the convention’s highest level of protection, which prohibits international trade for primarily commercial purposes. The listing entered into force on 5 March 2026. Our long-term science and Red List work form part of the evidence base behind it.