With the boat engine idle we drift for a little while waiting to spot the shadow in the water. While we are watching we see a large dorsal fin break the surface about 30 meters away from us, a tail fin follows and then we can see the top of it's huge mouth as the whale shark filters opens wide to filter food from the water.

Our boat captain skillfully maneuvers us in front of the shark and we carefully slip into the water so we don't scare this gentle giant away.


We manage to swim with this whale shark for many minutes, the shark unconcerned about us it continues to feed at the surface as we snorkel alongside with tuna darting all around. It starts to get a little difficult to keep up with the seemingly slow moving shark and the boat  maneuvers to pick up everyone.

After a headcount we get spotters back on the roof of the boat to

help our boat captain in locating the shark as it comes up and after
10 minutes we find ourselves in the perfect spot as the shark decides to surface right next to the boat! Once again we are lucky enough to swim for several minutes alongside this majestic creature.

Between us we manage to get some great photo's and capture some video footage as well. We collect all the relevant data for submission to the (ECOCEAN whale shark research database) so we can start to track the travels of this young 7m female.

The ECOCEAN Whale Shark Photo-identification Library is a visual database of whale shark encounters and of individually cataloged whale sharks. The library is maintained and used by marine biologists to collect and analyze whale shark encounter data to learn more about global populations of whale sharks.


We have two separate snorkels with this particular whale shark and we get a bonus of a passing pod of dolphins as well!