Encounters with Whale Sharks

The whale shark's maximum size a subject of unending debate, but it possibly reaches gargantuan lengths of 18m. Despite its size, snorkelling with one is a once-in-a-lifetime experience – the shark can be very curious, approaching snorkellers to investigate.

Swimmers can keep up with it, appreciating how, covered with light-coloured spots, bands and stripes, it is also one of the most distinctive of sharks. Even though its mouth is large enough to take in a person, the shark is a completely harmless filter feeder, roaming the world’s warmer oceans, following seasonal concentrations of food.

They either swim slowly through shoals of zooplankton with their mouths open, or remain stationary and vacuum up fish such as sardines or anchovies. They filter out objects as small as 1mm across with sieve-like structures on the inside of the gill rakers before allowing the water to exit through the five large gill slits on either side of the head. But they have relatively small throats and can't swallow anything larger than a small tuna.

Whale sharks are great travellers – a satellite-tagged individual from the Sea of Cortez, Mexico, went 13,000km to the Marshall Islands, Central Pacific, over a three-year period.

Whale sharks are officially protected in Western Australia, the Maldives, the Philippines, India, Honduras, along the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coasts of the USA. They are still being hunted in some countries, particularly Taiwan.

Source: www.sharktrust.org