In the summer of 2022, divers on Galápagos Shark Diving expeditions between July and September took part in that year's name-a-whale-shark program, submitting suggestions that helped fund two satellite tags, blood-sampling kits and dedicated research-vessel time for the Galápagos Whale Shark Project. Two sharks ended up carrying both a tag and a name that season: Olivia and Elise.
Olivia, tagged July 9, 2022 and estimated at around 11 meters long, was tracked traveling south from Darwin — one data point in the broader, still-developing picture of how these animals move through and beyond the marine reserve.
Elise, tagged a day earlier on July 8, turned out to be the more dramatic traveler of the two. Her tag logged roughly 3,500 nautical miles of movement before transmitting its last signal on February 2, 2023 — nearly seven months after she was tagged, and a reminder of just how far a single Galápagos whale shark can range once it leaves the sites divers actually see.
Neither shark's story is really about the individual animal so much as what it demonstrates: a name attached to a tagging program isn't just a nice touch for the divers who helped fund it. It's attached to a real, trackable data trail that keeps generating information about migration and habitat use long after the expedition that funded it has ended.
Source: adapted from Galápagos Shark Diving's own published article on the results of its 2022 name-a-whale-shark program.