Day 117 - Hellooooo Whale Sharks

Hi All, how is everyone? I hope you're well.

Well today was the day that I achieved my 2nd most important thing of my trip, swimming with Whale Sharks. And it was a fantastic day.

There were 20 people on the boat, and at the start of the day, we were advised of what the plans were, mainly trying to see Whale Sharks, Humpback Whales and Manta Rays. But before we headed out too deep in the water, the boat gave us a 30 minute snorkel on the reef, just to get us used to the swim. In that time, we saw turtles, thousands of fish, including 3ft round Batfish. Fantastic.

After the initial dive, we headed out deep, I mean not being able to see the bottom, and followed a spotter plane for about an hour, before the captain of the boat yelled "Whale Shark spotted", at which time everyone rushed to get all their diving gear on. It was funny, the 20 poeple were split up into two groups, as only 1 group can go in at a time. It wasn't long before we could see it on the side of the boat, and in we all hopped, following our marker. And what a beautiful fish to watch. It wasn't bothered with us at all, mainly staying at the top of the water. We estimated it to be about 5 metres long, so a small one in whale shark terms, but a huge fish in my eyes. After 5 minutes, we had to jump out, so the other team could get in, and this was repeated for about an hour. One go, it swam so fast for us, it was hard to keep up, but the next time we were in, all it wanted to do was circle us. Fantastic.

After our hour long "swim" we had to leave it, legally, and so headed up the coast, and it wasn't too long before we spotted 3 humpback whales, which we followed for about 30 minutes. Unfortunately, you don't get to swim with those.

On our way back, we stopped off just outside the reef to hunt for Manta Rays. It wasn't long before we found about 20 of them, all over the 3 metre size, and all happy to swim with us. Such lovely creatures. I could have almost ridden one I think.

So everyone on our boat had a great time, all achieving what they wanted. This is some event that I recommend to anyone who has an interest in animal/aquatic things. Fantastic.