International Lifestyle Magazine Issue 54 | Page 22

The story really starts in the year
2000 when I was living in England
and every time I went on a dive
trip would think that I was different
to everyone else, they were all
looking to get home, I wasn’t
and always wanted to stay, I had
my own business and house in
England and finally decided that
I had had enough, I would go
and live abroad and start a small
business. One of the places in
the Caribbean that I really liked
was Bonaire but to buy a house
and start a business would be
very expensive, so I decided over
the next year or so to look for
somewhere else, I
wanted it to be the Caribbean
so I kept putting into the internet
“Cheap Caribbean” and this place
“Utila” kept coming up, I had never
heard of it, but I had finally decided
I was going to sell everything ,
completely change my life and
move, I actually did just that, sold
everything jumped on a plane at
43 years old, and went to Utila with
the belief that if I did not like it I
would just get on a plane and go
to a different island and try there.
I went to Utila, fell in love with it
and decided that it was the place
for me. First I became a resident
bought some land with old,
unused, buildings on it and started
converting that into Deep Blue
Resort, in the mean time I also
started a small dive school in town.
During my first few weeks in Utila,
I was lucky enough to swim with
a whale shark, nothing could
compare to the size, majesty
and presence of it, that is when
I decided to find out more about
them.
What I found out was that there
were small pockets of people
doing scientific work with them but
nothing groundbreaking until I can
across a person called Dr Brad
Norman who was an Australian
marine biologist who had worked
out that the spots behind the gills
were like an individual fingerprint
and that they could be tracked by
this alone.At that time Australia
was the only place that was using
this system on a regular basis.

The story of the system is that Dr
Brad Norman had boxes full of
pictures of whale sharks, which
were large and small and all at
different angles, he then became
aware of the fingerprint area,
then a gentleman called Jason
Holmberg in the USA, who is
officially called an information
technologist, said that he could
write a computer program to match
the sharks automatically. He went
on some trips took photos of whale
sharks and eventually said that he
could not do it as whale sharks flex
and are not flat which a computer
screen is.
By chance he went to play squash
one day and met a person called
Zaven Arzoumanian who works
for NASA, yup the one that sends
up space ships etc he had had
some involvement with what is
called the Groth algorithm which
is a method of triangulation used
on the Hubble telescope as a
start recognition program which
nowadays everyone can even
download on their phones.
Taking this, it was converte d to
triangulate the spots on a whale
shark, the important thing about
this and where it is very different
from other research systems is the
public can use it, therefore with the
public allowed to upload photos
of whale sharks they have seen
anywhere in the world the public
are also becoming researchers,
when they upload a photo they will
be informed if it is a new unseen
whale shark or one that has
previously been seen before if it is
the latter it will give
that person the previous history
and in all occasions if a spot pattern
can be taken from the picture that
person will be informed if it is ever
seen again.
We in Utila were the second first
people outside of Australia to use
this system.
Now the library is used in nearly
50 countries and the statistics are.
53000+ photos collected
25000+ sighting reports
4800+ whale sharks collaboratively
tagged
4000+ data contributors
365 research days/year

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