Coastal Oceans Research and Development – Indian Ocean (CORDIO) is a non-profit research organization located in Mombasa, Kenya, which was formed in 1999 as a response to the mass bleaching of coral reefs as a result of the 1998 El-Nino event.
CORDIO has since expanded and works with a network of projects, collaborators and partners to generate knowledge and find beneficial solutions for management of marine ecosystems and people alike.
One of CORDIO’s recent projects involved conducting underwater surveys to assess population densities of large reef-associated fish including sharks in Tanzania, Comoros, Madagascar, Mozambique and Chagos. The surveys recorded no sharks in eastern Africa except at one reef in northern Mozambique, but sharks were observed at most sites in Chagos.
These results prompted CORDIO, working in partnership with the Zoological Society of London and Windsor University in Canada, to satellite tag tiger sharks in Kenya to better understand their movements in the western Indian Ocean, while simultaneously raising awareness of shark conservation in the area.
Learn more about the Zoological Society of London
Photos contributed by M. Samoilys, CORDIO, and ZSL
Preparing the SPOT satellite tags (Nige Hussey, Fiona Llewelyn and Matt Gollock)
Bringing a tight shark in by line and rod for tagging
A successfully tagged tiger shark swims away
