Anyone dove with whale sharks

[Rescue Diver68]

We snorkeled with 6 over two mornings last March with Deep Blue Resort on Utila. I was on an SRI trip research trip also. They're more interesting, they bring in expert(s) and you assist with the research. The rest of the week we didn't see anything. Capt. Swin is one of the local experts at finding them. During peak weeks in their program they put on a spotter boat to locate them while you're doing your morning dives.

Me too!

I got to photograph and report a whale shark to the Ecocean data base. Now I get an email from Ecocean whenever someone else reports a siting of the same whale shark. I's waay cool and Deep Blue was fantastic.

 

[Crowley]

we have them here in the red sea but never the fully grown sharks - Ningaloo reef on the East coast of Australia is supposed to be pretty good; some locations of the Phillipines, Thailand's Richlieu Rock is a hotspot.

They are, indeed, awesome. As has been posted before, it is humbling, to swim with giants. I waited almost 10 years to see my first whale shark, and I dive for a living. Some people see them during their open water training, and I am jealous!! When I saw my first whale shark last year, having had no luck anywhere else in the world, I was down on my knees in the sand and yes, I shed a tear or two. My customers couldn't understand why I was so ecstatic, because they had seen 20 in the phillipines in 2008....

10 years

x000 dives

1 Whale shark

Priceless.

Happy diving,

C.

 

[TV Mark]

My dive buddy(propjoe) and I went to Isle Murjures the second week of july 2009.
Captain Ramone and dive guide Balenta took us out in the gulf where we swam with 50-75
of the giants. Afterwards we were dropped off the coast of the island where we snorkled for
30-40 min. Back at the marina we got a hot meal and a drink of choise. Ramone has all sorts of
information about the Tiburon Ballenas.

 

[nelia1978]

I am also REALLY wanting to encounter one of these beautiful giants.. Dont know if it will happen anytime soon.. Going to dive in the Azores this fall and i know on rare occasions they do appear around there once in a while.. Hopefully it will be the exact days i will be diving,but I will be just as happy seeing a manta ray and the hundreds of dolphins they have there.

 

[diver 85]

Has anyone ever dove with whale sharks? Where did you do it? What is the best location to find them and is it pretty rare to site them?

Never dived with them BUT 1 Crhistmas on Roatan(~'00), my son & I 'caught' one while trolling for the blackfin tuna schooling around it(foul hooked in front of the tail fin)......Felt like (1) I had the world on a string or (2) I had a VW hung down there---lol.....There's a long story but the short one is it surfaced after an hour of fighting it(we thought we had a big yellowfin cuz when we looked a hundred yds away & saw the dorsal fin sticking out of the water------)....Come to find out there were 2 of them in the area & we only knew of 1 while 'fighting it'...We cut the line & let him have my Rapallo CD 18 lure....ALSO, had NO mask, fin or snokel in the boat to swim with it.....shucks

 

[diver 85]

Has anyone ever dove with whale sharks? Where did you do it? What is the best location to find them and is it pretty rare to site them?

ALSO, you ask where----we were 8 days too late on these last summer(July '09) @ the Flower Gardens, around THIRTY(30) of them TOGETHER-------8 fricking days.Needless to say I kept 1 eye on the surface on EVERY dive we made, but saw none.....you might want to try this place, I know i'll be back again this summer..

YouTube - Aggregation Of 30 Whale Sharks Near The Flower Gardens

btw, the Fling didn't let any divers/snorkelers in the water with them, afraid of their (30 of them) possible aggressive behavior......

 

[SelkieDVM]

I saw seven whale sharks on my trip to the Galapagos last October. It's my understanding that they are prettly predictable at Darwin's Arch in the Galapagos (where we saw them) during certain times of the year.

 

[Ed Hatfield]

A good trip for someone from the USA is to snorkel with the whale sharks in the Yucatan. It is not permitted to 'Dive' with them as the sites are government controlled and 'Protected'. There are two common options (1) Holbox and (2) Isla Mujeres. Last July I was in Playa del Carmen and I booked with EcoColors Tours (based in Cancun). It was a dive vacation (17 dives in a week) with a day off mid-week to off-gas and take in the whale shark trip. We had a goup of 4 and paid 150US p/p. We were picked up at the condo in Playa bright and early, 0700, and were back by 1700. The trip included transportation to the pier (Punta Juarez I think) north of Cancun, high speed boat to the contact area, lunch, and the return transportation. I am going again this July because it was AWESOME. It helps to be able to include it with a dive vacation; it just makes for a perfect off-day side trip. Of course the ruins also make an excellent side trip as well for those not interested in the whale sharks.

 

[Louie]

I'm very fortunate to have experienced few whale shark encounters - diving and snorkelling - while living and working in the Gulf of Thailand. The best and luckiest time was on a diveboat with just two students doing a surface interval on OW day one and our captain got a radio call from a fellow captain of a shark sighting. We sailed over and the lucky students got a great snorkel with a very large shark (they were beaming after this bonus for the rest of the day and it was nice to see such happy students).

 

[Compression]

Yes, Twice @ Richeilou Rock & Once @ Koh Bon in Thailand ...

Thats 3 in 5+ years of working here ... So its about luck ...

The feeling is like, your first kid or when you past your driving test ... Something you will never forget!