Every named whale shark in this fleet's history starts the same way: as a submission, not a decision made in an office. During expedition trips, divers who want to support that season's tagging effort can propose a name, and each suggestion goes into a canvas sack — the "Whale Shark Bag" — that travels with the boat for the rest of the season.
The draw itself ties directly to fundraising rather than working like a simple raffle. Founder Jenny Green pulls names from the bag in proportion to how much a given round of fundraising has actually raised. In 2023, contributions covered three satellite tags, so three names came out of the bag. The sharks those names eventually belong to — Makeba, Luna and Star, that particular year — are found and tagged on a later research expedition, not on the same trip where the naming happens.
All three 2023 names went to female sharks, which isn't a coincidence of the draw so much as a reflection of who actually shows up here: the large majority of adult whale sharks encountered in Galápagos waters are female, a pattern researchers still don't fully understand.
Once a shark carries both a name and a tag, it stops being a one-off encounter and becomes an ongoing research subject. The tag feeds tracking data back to the Galápagos Whale Shark Project, and the sharks' movements get shared periodically with the divers and donors who funded them, through social media and newsletter updates — turning a one-time naming draw into a multi-year thread guests can actually keep following.
Source: adapted from Galápagos Shark Diving's own published article unveiling its named whale sharks of 2023.