Swimming with a Whale Shark

June 09, 2014

Swimming with a Whale Shark

The bad luck finally left me and we had couple of days in Holbox island without rain. This means I could book a tour to swim with Whale Sharks. Some friends from Holland, Switzerland and France met in Tulum joined me in this new adventure. We left the island early in the morning not being sure if we could really find one of this sharks. The boat ride took us about 1h 30m to arrive in the middle of nowhere, but where the captain knew we had some possibilities to see them. But with animals you can never being 100% sure, they are unpredictable and you need to be very patient. We started moving slower, looking at the sea. On our sides other boats were searching too. Time was passing and I started losing hope, when finally we found one! From the boat we could see only his fin , all his body was underwater. Our guide told to the first couple to get ready to jump into the water, but once they actually did it, the whale shark went swimming deeper. In the meantime our captain received a communication from another boat with the coordinates of another whale shark. As we reached that point, we saw from the boat his big open mouth on the surface. We enter into the water in couple with our guide. When it was my turn, I got ready and I waited from the captain the signal. As soon as I immersed my head into the water I saw him: it was incredibly big. From the boat I could see only few parts of his body and I couldn't even imagine his real dimensions. Our guide estimated that he was long 8 metres, but to me he looked like 20 meters long, like a big submarine. I was so surprised/excited/amazed that for few seconds I was completely paralysed. I just started swimming when our guide told us to follow him. To be such a huge animal, he was moving very gently. Despite this, when I was swimming next to his fin I got a little bit scared and I tried to swim faster than him. Our first swim with the whale shark lasted about a minute, but it was very intense and full of emotions. We waited for our second turn to jump again into the water. This time the whale shark was swimming a little bit deeper but right in our direction showing us his big and open mouth. This time I was ready to swim with him. I gathered all my energies and I swam as fast as I could in order to be able to swim with him for a longer time.

Whale Sharks are the biggest fish in the world and for sure he was the biggest animal I've ever seen in my whole life. It was such an amazing experience for me... but on the other side I'm not so sure about the ethic of this kind of tour. Besides our boat, there were other 11 and all of them were chasing this whale shark. He didn't seem caring about us, but probably he's already used to humans . Like I said in my previous post, probably this will be the last year the government will allow this kind of tour.

Holbox island - completely submerged