Ganeshbhai Devjibhai Varidum was hauling nets off the coast of Gujarat when his crew spotted something that stopped them cold: a massive shadow beneath the surface, then black spots breaking through. They'd accidentally caught a whale shark—the largest fish on Earth, stretching 40 feet long and migrating thousands of miles like an ocean-crossing city bus.
The animal thrashed, tangling deeper into the net. Twenty-five years earlier, this story would have ended with the shark dead, towed to shore, and its oil used to waterproof fishing boats. Instead, the 54-year-old fisherman made a choice that cost him over $2,500 in equipment: he cut the net and let it go free.
"Just imagine, this is the largest fish in the world and it comes to our shore," Varidum says. "Watching it go free gave me peace of mind."
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Start Your News DetoxIt's a moment that wouldn't have been possible without a quiet spiritual shift happening across India's coastlines.
From commodity to sacred being
Whale sharks are built like living filters. They cruise tropical waters—from the Indian to Atlantic to Pacific oceans—with their mouths wide open, swallowing water and plankton, then pushing the water back out through mesh-like gills that trap tiny fish. Despite their size, they're gentle. Despite their gentleness, humans have hunted them relentlessly: for their fins, their oil, their meat.
In Gujarat, it was worse. Until the late 1990s, whale sharks migrated to these shores to feed and breed—and fishermen killed them routinely. They didn't even have a proper name in the local language. Just "badi macchli." Big fish.
The shift started with a film. In 2000, Indian filmmaker Mike Pandey released Shores of Silence, a documentary that showed what whale shark hunting actually looked like. Two years later, Vivek Menon from the Wildlife Trust of India pushed India's delegation at an international wildlife trade conference to advocate for protection. The combination worked. Regulations tightened. The narrative changed.
Whale sharks went from being resources to exploit into beings worthy of respect—a transformation that didn't happen in laws first, but in how people saw them. A fisherman like Varidum, cutting an expensive net loose, proves that shift is real. It's not about feeling good. It's about recognizing something larger than yourself deserves to live.
Today, whale shark populations still face threats from vessel strikes and climate change. But along India's coasts, the hunting has largely stopped. The gentle giants keep coming back. And more fishermen are making the choice to let them.
