Finally!

Yesterday the day finally came. I snorkelled with a whale shark!

After a day of doing absolutely nothing on Sunday (which definitely did not directly correspond to the amount I had to drink the night before), I stopped by the dive shop to send off a few e-mails before I called the day a complete waste. I found out the boat was heading to the north side of the island the next morning (that's whale shark territory), and when they asked me if I could work as divemaster for two Aussies I've gotten to know over the last couple of weeks, I agreed to it.

I got up bright and early and got to the diveshop at 6:10am to prep for the day's dive. At 7am, we took off. Our first dive site was The Maze, which was turned out to be a pretty good dive. We explored Willy's Hole, a small cave, and found a big green moray eel in the corner, followed directly by a large-ish spotted drum fish. About 15 minutes later, I saw a turtle and quickly got Chris & Kate's attention and we raced after it. After we caught up and had our share of turtle-watching, we turned around and headed back along the top of the reef to the boat, exploring a few smallish sand channels along the way. When all of the divers got back to the boat, we set off for our next dive site.

Not more than 5 minutes later, we spotted the first "boil," which is what you're looking for if you're whale-sharking. It's basically a bunch of activity on the surface where small fish are jumping up above the surface. Everyone scurried to the back of the boat to put on their masks, snorkels and fins, and we waited for the word from the captain. After about 5 to 10 minutes of circling around, he said GO! and I got my first glimpse of it.

Another guy (Brock) was just in front of me, and he got the best view, but I was probably second or third in the water. I basically made out the whale shark a bit ahead of us in the water but quickly going down. My first encounter lasted all of about 3 seconds, and then it was gone.

I disappointedly got back in the boat and we waited around for a bit to see if the whale shark would come back up to the surface again. Before long, we spotted a different (or perhaps the same) boil and headed towards it. This time, I was at the front of the boat and eager to get a better view. Well, I mis-heard the captain, jumped in early and didn't see anything... many others on the boat did see it, though. All I got was tired from having to swim so far back to the boat.

Well, we didn't give up, and by this time, another 5 boats had joined us in our search for the whale sharks. We waited. And waited. There were a few boils that we followed, but nothing. And then there was another boil. Fairly close to us. The captain maneuvered the boat into position and gave us the word. I jumped in and quickly looked around to see where it was because I couldn't see it from the boat. It was right underneath me. I could have touched it.

I yelped. It's not every day that there's the tail of a 7 meter/23 foot massive white-spotted black whale shark underneath you. And then I remembered that they eat plankton, not travellers, and I calmed down. It was swimming slightly faster than me, and I wasn't disappointed when it gained a couple of meters on me - it's still a massive creature and one wrong swing of the tail wouldn't feel very nice. I followed it for a minute or two from the surface with my snorkel, and then I decided to head back to the boat. I exchanged some "Awesome!"s with the Aussie fundivers and we slowly swam back to the boat.

Amazing. And the whale shark we saw is considered to be a smaller one!!!

After our swim, we headed back to the boat and took off for our next dive, which was fairly uneventful, but still good.