Hi there blog buddies,
I thought I'd share an amazing day in the
And that’s a real shame because it was one of those experiences we all dream about having – and I got to live it. To me it’s second to the turtle eggs in the hand thingie, but I’m weird – I’ll let you, the reader, decide which was cooler.
After two dives at a site called Therese South (did two 50m transects for hard coral diversity and invert counts,) we were riding the GVI Diveboat, Manta, back to the base but suddenly noticed what looked like strange wind patterns on the water. It was actually several schools of thousands of fusiliers darting around just under the surface, and where there are schools of fish feeding on plankton, there are often whale sharks. After a quick look around, sure enough - we found one. So we threw on the closest snorkel gear handy (I wound up with someone else’s mask, but thankfully, my own wonderful fins,) hopped in and swam with it. They move slowly and gracefully, but when you are close to 10m long, slow speed is still way faster than the puny humans struggling to keep up. I was thankful for my good fins as we followed along, guessing which way they would travel when they dove and cutting the corner on any turns to keep pace. I found that the whale shark often came up just in front of the pack of feeding fusiliers, and tried to get ahead. It worked way too well several times and I had to dodge out of the way of the large mouth scooping up food. I couldn’t believe how long the encounter was lasting, and I kept checking my watch in disbelief as the time passed 5 minutes, then 10, 20, 30…
Just when I was getting really tired (YOU try sprint snorkelling with one of these beautiful creatures for that long!) another showed up, and then minutes later, another!! Three whale sharks and they wouldn't go away! I would hop from one to the other when they passed close to each other, looking for distinguishing marks, trying to catch a peek underneath for the sex, and just enjoying the awesome display. I almost got run over so many times, I couldn't count them. One of them almost bumped the boat which was just floating and waiting for us to come back onboard – fat chance! They are such huge gentle creatures, just cruising around scooping up massive amounts of plankton, barely caring that we were just a meter or two away. It must be the way it feels to be one of those little white birds perched on the back of a water buffalo. After an hour and a half (!!) swimming around and after them, WE got tired and dragged ourselves back onto the boat to head in for lunch. Can you imagine letting them swim away because you've had enough? What an experience! We laughed exhaustedly in wonder all the way back to base. There are pictures, I just haven't gotten them onto my hard drive yet - maybe I'll get them up here soon, if the internet gods allow it. Someone also got some video of me trying not to get run over by one of the whale sharks - I'll have to bring it home to show you...
I think that brings me up to date for the blogging – in other news, I only have about two and a half weeks left here, and that is making me really sad. Plus the planning for
Stay Wet and Warm,
Clement
