Nearly 80% of whale sharks in a tourism hotspot have human-caused scars

A person swims near a whale shark off the coast of St Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean - (Flora Tomlinson-Pilley)

Whale sharks in popular tourism regions are sustaining most of their injuries from human activity, a new study says.

Nearly 80 per cent of the injuries among whale sharks in Indonesian waters are scars from collisions with boats or fishing platforms.