Swimming with Giants

Before last year, I had never heard of  Whale Sharks. They are the biggest fish on earth.  A true shark, it is nonetheless a harmless plankton-eating machine. They migrate through the Mexican Rivera during August- September as they head down to their breeding grounds in Belize. In the area near Cancun you can swim with them. The  poster for the Whale Shark encounter taunted “Do You Dare?”  Well, of course we did.

We started out with a caravan of small boats each holding six to ten passengers and a captain. There was a perfect blue sky, popcorn clouds and transparent water in shades of turquoise, aqua, seagreen and royal blue which fed my color-loving soul.

The boat sped twenty five miles out into the open water bouncing crazily over the formidable swells, sunlight tossing rainbows into the spray the boat kicked up. On the way pods of Dolphins often swam along side the boats leaping and playing as if this were just the most fun for them. They are wonderful to watch. The ocean herself is a living thing, I believe, and in her belly a second world of living creatures.

Our guide schooled us on what to expect when we at last got to these magnificent giants of the sea.  These behemouth fish are actually gentle. They swim with their huge mouths open scooping  up the plankton and small fish and expelling the water through their gills. We were soon to learn the difference between being a large fish in a small pond and being a small fish in a big pond. We were definately the small fish.

Our guide said we should become like the fish in the sea, just another animal at one with the ocean. He advised us to swim along side the shark rather than toward him. They tend to swim on the surface of the water so they are easy to spot. Their huge caudal fin and two dorsal fins stick high out of the water making them easy to spot from a distance.  Though we had been told that some might be a big as a school bus, we were still not prepared for how truly gigantic these creatures were. Our first sight of them was a thrill. I found them to be quite beautiful with lines of yellow and white spots running the lengh of their bodies. The spots between their pectoral fins are like a fingerprint, no two are the same. The image below is a stock photo because we did not have an underwater camera with us.

When we finally had the chance to get in the water with them we had to really work to keep up with them. They are very fast. The sea was thick with  plankton they feed on. We swam quite close beside one that was about  twentyfive feet long. I could see his eye and it seemed that he was looking back at me with curiosity, turning his head slightly toward me  before swimming away. Two tiny remora were attatched to his gills catching the leftovers.

Afterwards as we climbed back onto the boat happy and exhausted,  our Captain was stirring up a delicious Cerviche for us.  Boy, did that taste good.  The long ride back to shore was full of animated conversation about what we had experienced.

And what a truly amazing adventure it was. Awesome!