Oceanic whitetips tend to associate with pilot whales, but the one we ran into was not while looking for whales - the guide and the other three people on my trip dropped on the FAD buoy because pelagics tend to visit. I was trying to get something sorted out (probably my camera) and the rest of the gang was about to tell me not to jump in when I dropped over the side. Then they figured they'd wait for me to join them before bagging it, and right before I got to the group a little ~1.5-meter oceanic whitetip turned up. Despite the fact that he was smaller than any of us and outnumbered 5-1, he made multiple close passes from different angles and I got the distinct impression that if we weren't all on guard he might have tried something.
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For context, that last shot isn't "Let me pet this little cutie," it's "I'm putting myself between you and my clients so you don't get any cute ideas."
I would change that statement of yours to "snorkeling with whales in that area
while not staying on guard is bad news." Our guide kept lookout and we were told to always watch out for them on our own also. That was the only encounter we had; one of the others had been on the same trip with the same guide last year and they got surrounded by about eight oceanics.
The Ma'o Mana Foundation (associated with Moorea Moana Tours) is trying to educate the local whale charters on shark awareness, but I'm not sure how much traction that's got. One of the big issues is that the number of whale charters is going up rapidly; this past year 12 new boats were added to the existing 21. I'm told that a number of them are not locally-run either; the crews fly in from France for whale season and fly out afterwards.
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