International Lifestyle Magazine Issue 54 | Page 24

After setting up our whale shark research, of course the hard point was raising money not only for this but to do some satellite tagging as well which is very expensive, each tag costs approx. $4500 and then you have to pay for the satellite time. There was no choice, to start I had to pay for it myself, and I must admit although we do put all profit from customers into paying for research it still costs me a fortune each year, even just flying in top researchers from other part of the world, this year I think that alone is costing approx. $6,000 The resort is set in the perfect location away from town, with its own shore diving on a great reef, so people, if they do not want to go out on a boat, can go shore diving any time of day and night. At the moment in Utila we have identified over 100 individual whale sharks at different times of the year and some with multiple sightings. You can read about the research at this website http://www. utilawhalesharkresearch.com/wp/ wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Foxet-al-2013-Whale-sharks-in-Utila. pdf To find out about getting involved in the research, diving holidays and packages available contact http://www.deepblueutila.com/ index.php http://youtu.be/q_bBqqn-Bp0 Honduras Cell phone: [phone] (For Honduras numbers, remember to dial 011 if calling from the U.S.) Office hours are 9am to 5pm, Monday through Saturday or email is usually best as we still enjoy diving [email protected] www.internationallifestylemagazine.com