Tata Chemicals funds whale shark conservation project in Gujarat

Tata Chemicals Ltd (TCL) has joined hands with the National Institute of Oceanography, the Gujarat forest department an the Wildlife Trust of India for research on whale shark and coral reef.

Funded by Tata Chemicals, with a corpus of Rs 2 crore, the conservation project will also involve other marine experts from the national and international arena,  TCL said in a release.

Tata Chemicals and WTI today signed an MoU for a conservation project that will create awareness and undertake research, to save the endangered species of whale shark that visits the coastal shores of Gujarat.

The Gujarat forest department and Wildlife Trust of India (WTI) entered into a memorandum of understanding for a conservation research programme on whale sharks and corals.

The project will study the whale shark habitat, map their migration process and various aspects of its life cycle and their genetic patterns and estimate the population and document the results for effective and efficient protection.

The research on corals will include study of coral diversity, mapping, habitat, threats, and experiments for coral transplanting. The research inputs on coral will feed scientific information to the proposed interpretation center at Dwarka / Mithapur and a major initiative in coral transplanting, the release said.