Let's save the whale shark - How it all started
Hello,
My name is Melvin and I'm a year 4 student in Victoria, Australia.
It all started when at school my teacher said we were going to have a "save an endangered animal project". The teacher gave us an option of endangered or critical endangered animals, me and my partner spun this wheel because we couldn't decide which one - it was a Whale Shark! I wasn't keen on the animal at first but I couldn't decide what else. Then we had to think of how to persuade others to help the whale sharks, and that's how I got the idea of the game. (Then we wrote information reports too.) That's how I want Whale Sharks to be free from extinction as I started to be fond about this gentle creature.
The Game
I based the game off "Snakes and Ladders". It's called "Nets and Whales". I made it portable so you can carry it around but like Snakes and Ladders, check out the details of the rules in my post below!
Please consider donating to my page and helping WWF-Australia save this fascinating animal. Your support would mean the world to me.
Thank you so much!
Melvin
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My Updates
The Game
Sunday 1st Dec
Whale Shark Post
Sunday 1st Dec
In the ocean, you see a dark mass drifting towards you. A mouth that seems to go endless. You might be seeing the Whale Shark. A whale shark is a carnivorous mammal, bigger than any fish in the seven seas. But the reality is that they are gentle giants. They are quite fascinating creatures but they might join the fate of the dinosaurs. Want to know why? Read on to find out.
Appearance
A whale shark looks like a fish but bigger than any fish in the ocean, approximately 12 metres in length. Generally a grey-ish, blue-ish colour with white dots randomly cover the giant and a tail that reaches over 1.5 metres in height. The body starts like a fish but the mouth an oval shape except thinner like a hammerhead shark. Except the "Hammerhead" is more like the mouth and eyes at the front corner of the head. The average whale shark weighs roughly 9 tonnes.
Diet
The whale shark even though it has several hundreds of teeth, drifts in the ocean, instead these types of fish are filter feeders(swimming forward, mouth out wide, to their prey. Only eating tiny mechanisms). You might think a whale shark will eat creatures as big as a dolphin like a snake. But like the whale, they will eat animals far smaller than itself. They will feed on krill, jellyfish, crab and fish larvae. and plankton.
Habitat
Whale sharks mainly live in oceans between the tropic of lancer and the tropic of Capricorn, where the oceans are warmer. They live there because they are warm-blooded
Reproduction
Whale sharks are ovoviviparous the production of an egg in the body and will hatch immediately within release from the parent). Baby whale sharks are called pups. Funnily enough no one has ever seen a whale shark give birth to a baby one.
Threats
Whale sharks are endangered!
An average whale shark would live up to 80-130 years which
WILL make you wonder how they are going extinct? Well it's due to overfishing, Habitat loss, and pollution! Whale sharks are treasured in international markets. Lots of people have demand for their meat, fins and oil as also victims of bycatch (the accidental capture of non-targeted creatures using fishing gear). Now because of this act there are 103,000 whale sharks left in the wild.
Whale sharks are carnivorous mammals that live in the tropical oceans. We must save these gentle giants from extinction and they are an important part of the ecosystem or plankton numbers might go out of hand... Now donate to WWF today or a whale shark dies a day!
