♪ (water gurgling) (Farukhkha speaking Gujarati) ♪ (group speaking Gujarati) (crowd applauding) ♪ ♪ (waves murmuring) (water splashing) (Farukhkha speaking Gujarati) NARRATOR: It's prime fishing season in one of the busiest fishing ports in India.

(person chanting and playing drums) Blessing rituals help fishermen start their day.

(person playing drums) These coastal waters are rich in ocean life, yielding around 700,000 tons of catch each year.

They're also frequented by the largest fish on the planet, the whale shark.

♪ (water gurgling) Adults can grow longer than a school bus, weigh twice as much, and can live for 100 years.

These gentle giants live in warm seas throughout the Atlantic and Indo-Pacific oceans.

(water splashing) They're often found at the surface, filter feeding for microscopic plankton and shrimp-like krill.

♪ (water gurgling) That's where they encounter humans and the deadly threats they bring.

♪ Farukhkha Bloch works with the wildlife trust of India and has spent the past 11 years trying to protect the sharks, here in his home state.

♪ (water splashing) (Farukhkha speaking Gujarati) (water splashing) NARRATOR: It is thought that female whale sharks may come to give birth here, in the Arabian Sea, west of India.

Off the shores of Veraval, Gujarat, fisherman had spotted whale sharks for decades, but rarely hunted them.

But when fish stocks began plummeting in the late 1980's the fishers set their sights on the whale shark.

(Farukhkha speaking Gujarati) (group speaking Gujarati) (Farukhkha speaking Gujarati) NARRATOR: With no laws protecting the whale sharks, fisherman caught as many as they could.

(Farukhkha speaking Gujarati) NARRATOR: Soon, as many as 1,000 whale sharks were killed every year, here in Gujarat alone.

The meat and rich oil harvested from their fins and livers were sold in places like Taiwan and China.

♪ ♪ (water splashing) The fishing took its toll.

♪ (water splashing) In the past 50 years, it's believed that the global whale shark population has been cut in half, to around 170 thousand.

(Farukhkha speaking Gujarati) NARRATOR: The documentary and survey exposed the damage caused by local whale shark hunting.

(Farukhkha speaking Gujarati) ♪ (water gurgling) NARRATOR: It was the first fish species to receive protected status in India.

♪ (water gurgling) ♪ But with so few marine officers patrolling the coast, the new regulation proved almost impossible to enforce.

The whale sharks' survival would ultimately depend on the fishers' willingness to stop hunting it.

And that would require a voluntary change of heart.

(Farukhkha speaking Gujarati) NARRATOR: But the 'Save the Whale Shark' campaign was up against decades of fisherman seeing whale sharks as a valuable commodity.

♪ (Farukhkha speaking Gujarati) (bells chiming) NARRATOR: Illegal fishing continued despite the outreach efforts.

(crowd murmuring) (bells chiming) ♪ Then, the campaign's message reached someone who could make an appeal from a higher authority.

♪ (birds chirping) (Morari speaking Gujarati) NARRATOR: Morari Bapu is a popular and respected spiritual leader here in Gujarat.

People gather in the hundreds of thousands to hear him recite and interpret the ancient and sacred Hindu poem, the Ramayana.

And his lessons about living with truth, love and compassion resonate with millions of followers.

So, many were ready to listen when he spoke on behalf of the whale sharks.

(Morari speaking Gujarati) NARRATOR: He centered his appeal on a connection between the shark and local culture.

(Morari speaking Gujarati) ♪ (rain pours) NARRATOR: In Indian culture, daughters often return to their parents' homes when it is time for them to give birth.

Morari Bapu's appeal resonated with his followers.

He also gave the shark a new nickname: 'Vhali' or "Dearest One", a powerful rebrand.

♪ (water gurgling) ♪ (Morari speaking Gujarati) ♪ NARRATOR: Volunteers adapted the guru's words into a play, that fishers could relate to.

(engine revs) They use a life-sized model of the shark to make a splash, and draw a crowd.

They act out a skit where fisherman accidentally catch a whale shark, and show how to safely release it.

(person speaking Gujarati) (Morari speaking Gujarati) NARRATOR: They demonstrate what Morari Bapu's message looks like when put into action.

(person speaking Gujarati) (crowd applauding) NARRATOR: In real life, freeing whale sharks is no small act.

The financial loss from cut nets and untapped profit has a real impact on the fishers' livelihoods.

And trying to make up for that loss from other fish stocks puts them at risk of overfishing.

♪ So, in 2006 the government created a compensation program to help support the push toward conservation.

(Aradhana speaking English) (indistinct chatter) NARRATOR: That's around $300.

The incentive was welcomed, and reports of freed sharks began to rise.

Still, the money was ten to twenty times less than what fishermen could get for a single whale shark.

And that makes their conservation efforts all the more remarkable.

(birds calling) (Ratilal speaking Gujarati) NARRATOR: Ratilal Bamaniya is head fisherman of his port, and has helped his peers turn from hunters to conservationists.

♪ (water splashing) (Ratilal speaking Gujarati) NARRATOR: He's just returned from a fishing trip where a whale shark found its way into his nets.

After cutting the nets open to free the shark he's come home so that his family can mend them.

It will take about 15-days.

(Ratilal speaking Gujarati) (Nirixa speaking Gujarati) (Ratilal speaking Gujarati) (Nirixa speaking Gujarati) ♪ ♪ NARRATOR: To ensure that fishers have actually freed whale sharks when they make claims, authorities require them to provide video evidence of the rescue.

(people speaking Gujarati) So, fisherman like Babubhai are equipped with cameras, and an app that makes documentation easy.

(Babu speaking Gujarati) NARRATOR: The system is working.

(people speaking Gujarati) ♪ (water splashing) (people speaking Gujarati) NARRATOR: The self- documented videos are also allowing scientists to learn more about the whale sharks.

♪ (water splashing) One area of intrigue is their life cycle.

Unlike most other fish species, whale sharks give birth to live young.

No one has ever recorded such an event, but here, off the shores of Veraval, the offspring are appearing in some of the fishermen's videos.

(Farukhkha speaking Gujarati) ♪ (Manoj speaking English) NARRATOR: They're also trying to understand where the sharks come from and where they go.

They satellite tag some of the accidentally caught sharks, tracking them to gather much-needed data about their movements in the open ocean.

(Manoj speaking English) NARRATOR: What they learn could bolster marine protections here and reinforce everything the community is already doing to conserve the whale shark.

♪ (Manoj speaking English) ♪ (water gurgling) (Farukhkha speaking Gujarati) ♪ ♪ (water splashing) (Morari speaking Gujarati) ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪