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Helen Briggs BBC News 6 Sep 19; The number of whales and dolphins washing up around the UK coastline has risen, according to new figures. In 2017 alone, 1,000 animals were stranded - more than in any year since records began. A total of 4,896 whales, dolphins and porpoises died on beaches between 2011 and 2017 - up 15% on the previous seven years. Scientists found a number of causes for the deaths, including infectious diseases, fishing and plastic. It's difficult to say conclusively what's driven the rise, but it's associated with multiple causes, including rises in some dolphin and whale populations, they say. "Strandings aren't actually in and of themselves bad news," Rob Deaville of ZSL (Zoological Society of London), who led the report, told BBC News. "There's a misconception that we're trying to stop strandings - we're not, we're trying to learn more about those that are due to human activities and then try and mitigate those where ...

Business Mirror 9 Sep 19; More than 100 new �butanding� (whale shark), including juveniles, spotted in Donsol, the highest number in several years. DONSOL, Sorsogon�One-hundred-four new butanding (whale shark) individuals have been identified in Ticao Pass off the coast of Donsol, Sorsogon, between January and June 2019, according to a report from the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Philippines. Whale shark, classified as Endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) on their Red List of Threatened Species, is a filter-feeding carpet shark and the largest living fish species in the world. Each whale shark can be identified based on the unique pattern of spots behind its gills, which serves as a �fingerprint� for identification. Just as no two human fingerprints are alike, no two whale sharks have the same spot pattern. The addition of these new sightings puts the total number of whale shark individuals spotted in Donsol at 676 since the monitoring began in 2...

Avila Geraldine New Straits Times 15 Aug 19; KOTA KINABALU: A recent diving trip turned extra special for a group of divers near Pulau Lankayan off Sandakan when they received a surprise visit from two protected juvenile whale sharks. The slow-moving and filter-feeding sharks were sighted at a reef, 2.5km away from the island. The pair appeared around midday on Aug 11 when seven scuba divers were on a leisure dive. Their presence brought the total number of whale shark sightings at Lankayan to seven this year. The surprise encounter was also documented on video and shared on Reef Guardian's Facebook page. The 56-second footage shows a lone whale shark swimming near a boat, just below the surface. Reef Guardian representative Davies Austin Spiji, said the weather was bright and sunny while the waves were a slightly choppy at the time of the sighting. "The sharks were first sighted by the dive centre team of Lankayan Island Dive Resort. They then informed us (Reef Guardian) abo...