It was early on the morning of Thursday, January 22, when the sea at Kochuthoppu, on the southern edge of Thiruvananthapuram, looked no different from any other winter morning. The sky was pale, the waves were gentle, and the fishers were pulling in their shore-seine nets in silence, half awake, thinking only of the day’s catch and the long hours ahead. The beach smelled of wet rope and salt, and the usual cries of seagulls floated over the water. Nothing suggested that this would become a morning that many of them would remember for years.
Then the net refused to move.
There was a strange weight beneath the water, a deep resistance that did not feel like fish. As the men leaned back and pulled harder, the rope cut into their palms and the net curved sharply under the surface. For a moment, some thought it might be a rock or a sunken log. Then a massive shape appeared in the shallow surf, grey and white, slowly turning, its wide mouth opening and closing as if it was struggling to breathe.
A whale shark had entered the net.
The animal was enormous. Even partly submerged, it looked longer than the fishing boat anchored nearby. Its body was covered with white spots that shimmered under the morning light, and its skin felt rough and thick when one of the fishers touched it. The shark moved slowly, not violently, as if confused rather than frightened. But the net had tightened around its fins and gills. It could not turn. It could not swim forward. The tide was going out.
Within minutes, the news travelled along the coast. Someone made a phone call. Someone else ran down the beach shouting. At Vettucaud and Kochuvelli, just a few kilometres away, two more whale sharks had been found caught in similar nets. What could have been three silent deaths in three different places had suddenly turned into a single morning of urgency, patience and collective effort.
By the end of that Thursday, three whale sharks, two males and one female, measuring about 12 feet, 16 feet and 20 feet, had been freed and released by local fishers working with the Wildlife Trust of India (WTI). It was the first time in Thiruvananthapuram that three such rescues had taken place on the same day.
With these rescues, fishers along Kerala’s coast have now helped save 54 whale sharks, animals so large that they seem almost unreal when seen up close, and yet so helpless when trapped in a net meant for much smaller creatures.
The whale shark (Rhincodon typus) is the largest fish in the world. It can grow as long as a city bus and weigh more than twenty tonnes. Its mouth is wide enough for a small child to stand inside. Yet it is one of the gentlest creatures in the ocean. It feeds on plankton, fish eggs and tiny marine organisms, filtering thousands of litres of water every hour through its gills.
Its body is marked with a unique pattern of white spots, like fingerprints, so no two whale sharks look exactly alike. These patterns help researchers identify individuals across oceans, tracking their movements over years and sometimes decades. But for most people, a whale shark is not a scientific subject. It is something almost mythical, a creature that belongs more to imagination than to everyday life.
Every year, between October and March, whale sharks move along the Arabian Sea coast of India. They follow plankton blooms that appear in warm coastal waters, and in doing so, they often come close to shore, sometimes within a few hundred metres of beaches where people swim and fish.
“Whale sharks are an endangered migratory species that visit this coast every year,” says Sajan John, Coordinator, Marine Projects, WTI. “They are not aggressive. They do not hunt. But because they come close to the shore, they get caught in fishing nets. Without the help of fishers, many of them would not survive.”
Thiruvananthapuram is known for shore-seine fishing, a traditional method that has been practised for generations. The net, locally called kambavala, is spread from the beach into shallow water, forming a long-curved wall that guides small fish into a narrowing space. When the tide goes out, fishers pull the net back to the shore, often with dozens of people working together.
It is a method that depends on tides, teamwork and timing. It is also a method that cannot distinguish between a shoal of sardines and a whale shark.
When a whale shark swims into a kambavala net, it does not realise the danger. It keeps moving forward, filtering water, until it reaches the narrow end. Then it tries to turn around and cannot. As the tide recedes, the net tightens. The animal becomes tired, stressed and slowly loses the ability to breathe properly. Many die without ever being seen by humans.
“Between November and March, this happens quite often,” says John. “But this is the first time we have seen three whale sharks rescued on the same day in different places along this coast.”
At Kochuthoppu, around 20 fishers entered the water with knives and ropes. Some were young men, some were in their fifties, their bodies shaped by years of pulling nets and rowing boats. They moved slowly, careful not to hurt the animal or themselves. They knew that a sudden movement could send the shark into panic or tear the net so badly that it would be useless.
The whale shark thrashed at first, its massive tail hitting the water, sending waves into the group. A few men stepped back. Then they returned, cutting the net strand by strand, freeing the fins, then the gills, then the tail. The animal slowly became calmer, as if it sensed that it was no longer trapped.
For nearly an hour, the men stood waist-deep in water, pushing and pulling, guiding the giant body back towards deeper sea. Someone tied a rope loosely around the tail to help steer it. Others held the head, gently turning it in the right direction. When the shark finally swam away, disappearing into the blue, there was no cheering. Only silence, heavy breathing, and a strange feeling that something rare had just passed through their hands.
The same scene played out at Vettucaud and Kochuvelli. In all three places, nets were damaged. The day’s catch was lost. Some fishers would return home with nothing to sell. But the animals were alive.
Not very long ago, most fishers saw whale sharks only as trouble. They tore expensive nets. They delayed fishing. They brought no income. Many sharks died because saving them felt impossible, and because no one had told fishers that these animals were protected or important.
That began to change in 2017, when the WTI, along with the Kerala Forest Department, started working closely with fishing communities under the Pan-India Whale Shark Conservation Project. The idea was simple. Talk to fishers. Listen to them. Train them. Build trust. Make rescue possible.
WTI teams began visiting coastal villages, explaining what whale sharks were, why they mattered, and how to safely cut nets without killing the animal. They shared phone numbers. They created small rescue groups. Slowly, fishers began to call for help instead of hiding incidents.
Across India, especially along the coast of Gujarat where the programme began nearly two decades ago, more than 1,000 whale sharks have now been rescued and released by fishers themselves. Kerala’s numbers are smaller, but the shift in thinking is just as deep.
At the centre of many rescues in Thiruvananthapuram is Ajit Shanghumukhom, a fisherman who has become a key figure in responding to whale shark emergencies. He is not a scientist or an officer. He is someone who knows the sea, the nets, and the people who work on this coast. When fishers call him, he comes. Sometimes on a bike. Sometimes on a boat. Sometimes in the middle of the night.
“This is the 54th rescue by Ajit and his team,” says John. “Without people like him, many of these sharks would not survive at all.”
Ajit knows that every rescue comes with a cost. Nets are torn. Money is lost. Time is wasted. But under the WTI programme, fishers receive some compensation for damaged gear. More importantly, they receive something else. Respect. Recognition. A sense that what they are doing matters beyond their daily struggle to earn a living.
“There was a time when we thought only about the catch,” Ajit says. “Now, when we see a whale shark, we think first about how to save it.”
On the beaches of Thiruvananthapuram, children now grow up hearing stories of whale sharks being rescued. Some have seen it with their own eyes. Tourists stop to watch. Students volunteer. Forest officials arrive not to punish, but to assist.
Slowly, quietly, something has changed. The sea is no longer just a place of extraction. It is becoming a place of shared responsibility.