Alessandro Ponzo

TL;DR: The results reveal the profound impact that fishing has had on reef shark populations: no sharks on almost 20% of the surveyed reefs, and shark depletion was strongly related to socio-economic conditions such as the size and proximity of the nearest market, poor governance and the density of the human population.

TL;DR: This is the first description of a previously identified aggregation occurring off Panaon Island, Southern Leyte through the use of photographic identification, and it showed that many whale sharks return to the study site over time.

TL;DR: Extended residency and differences in lagged identification rates suggest behavioural modification on provisioned individuals, underlying the necessity for proper management of this tourism activity.

TL;DR: The whale shark is an ideal flagship species for citizen science projects because of its charismatic nature, its size, and the associated ecotourism ventures focusing on the species at numerous coastal aggregation sites.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors explored the ethics of provisioning wildlife to enhance tourist interactions at a whale shark tourism site in Oslob, Philippines and found that the majority of respondents supported whale shark provisioning, despite many being aware of the ethical complications of providing sharks for tourism purposes.