Whale Sharks are found in all tropical and warm temperate seas except the Mediterranean (Compagno 1984a, Wolfson 1986, Last and Stevens 1994). Although the range of this species typically lies between latitudes 30°N and 35°S, it has occasionally been sighted at latitudes as high as 41°N and 36.5°S (Wolfson 1986). Whale Sharks are known to inhabit both deep and shallow coastal waters and the lagoons of coral atolls and reefs (Demetrios 1979, Wolfson 1983). Iwasaki (1970) reported that they are found in surface seawater temperatures between 18?30°C, but most frequently occur in surface sea-water between 21? 25°C. Archival tags have recorded dives to over 700 m and a water temperature of 7.8°C off the coast of Belize (Graham and Roberts in prep.).

Whale Sharks are found almost all year round off the east coast of Taiwan (Province of China) (Leu et al. 1997), Honduras (A. Antoniou pers. comm.) and near the Seychelles (Gudger 1932). Ongoing studies on the population of Whale Sharks around Seychelles inner islands indicate that, although occasional shark sightings are made throughout the year, there are two seasonal peak sighting periods from June to August and October to November (Marine Conservation Society Seychelles, unpubl.). Similar patterns of infrequent year-round sightings and seasonal feeding aggregations of larger numbers (tens, to low hundreds) are recorded from many areas. Aggregations of whale shark occur in Indian coastal waters between December and April (Silas 1986), March? June in Tanzania (Yahya and Jiddawi pers. comm.), in Mozambique and northern KwaZulu-Natal (South Africa) from November to January (Beckley et al. 1997), off the coast of Somalia in September, off Chile during October, in the Sea of Cortez around May?June and October? November, in the Gulf of Mexico between August and September (Clark and Nelson 1997), off the coast of Belize in April/May to June (Heyman et al. 2001), in the Bohol Sea of the Philippines between April and May (Trono 1996, Alava et al. 2002), in the Coral Sea, near the Great Barrier Reef during November and December (McPherson 1990), at Ningaloo Reef in Western Australia in March? May (Norman 1999) and at Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean between November and January. There are also occasional reports from the Florida Keys (E. De Sabata pers. comm.). Although whale sharks have been sighted in numerous other regions, these sightings are generally sporadic and seasonal.

Recent developments in electronic and satellite tagging of Whale Sharks have demonstrated that these animals undertake multi-annual and very long-distance migrations. These include over 2,000 km from north-west Australia towards Asia (pers. obs. 2002), 550 km within a few weeks (Graham and Roberts in prep.), a 2,000 km two month migration from the Mindanao Sea, inner Philippines, to 280 km south of Vietnam (Eckert et al. 2002) and a 13,000 km migration in over 37 months from the Gulf of California, Mexico, to near Tonga (Eckert and Stewart 2001). Three sharks tagged in the Seychelles, Indian Ocean, in 2001 travelled west to Zanzibar, north-west to Somalia, and over 5,000 km to the coast of Thailand, respectively (Rowat 2002).