Whale sharks, whale sharks, whale sharks...

Over the last couple months we got really lots and lots of whale sharks in Moalboal. Many of our divers can tell a story or two about these encounters of the big kind. There are for example our friends and guests Diana and Joern whi dive with since so many years. This time they stayed about 10 days with us. It just happened that both of their birthdays were within these 10 days, and it just happened that on Diana's birthday a whale shark passed by and on Joern's birthday a couple of days later, another one. Joern is also the one providing these beautiful pictures and videos from these 2 dives.

Whale Shark Mania!

Guys, the whale shark are back. BIG time! Our dive instructor Tommi has 2 PADI Open Water Students, Michael and Christian, and dives the house reef all the time. Here is the Log Book entries of the dive students:

Oct. 2, 2007: Open Water Dive 1 (this is the very first Open Water dive in the course): Whale Shark

Oct. 3, 2007: Open Water Dive 2: Whale Shark

Oct. 4, 2007: Open Water Dive 4: Whale Shark

So these students saw in 3 out of their 4 certification dives whale sharks. Right now we have a giant school of sardines at our house reef and hey are spawning. We assume this keeps the whale shark around for a while. Our certified divers are not going boat diving anymore, everybody is just diving the house reef. And, I guess, Michael and Christian, our PADI Open Water Students, are spoiled for life...

Whale Shark Special

Yesterday we had a very special whale shark encounter. Over the last couple of days, many divers reported whale shark sightings along the coast line, so we knew that some are in the area. We just came back from a wonderful dive at Pescador Island when Ryan, our “quappo” boatman, suddenly spotted the tip of a whale shark fin, just in the middle of the sea. Excited he stirred the boat into the direction of that fin. Everybody expected that the whale shark would disappear once the boat came close. But to our astonishment this whale shark was not bothered at all by the boat. It just stayed close to surface, barely moving and so all of our divers entered the water with mask, snorkel and fins (and the luckier ones with their u/w camera). Even then the whale shark couldn’t be bothered by the presence of a handful of divers and snorkelers in the water. I slowly circled the boat and swam a little bit acting like a photo model. This was going on for more than 20 minutes. The staff in the dive center saw the boat floating in the middle of the sea and assumed engine trouble. Abeth, the assisting manager, tried to call the boat on their cell phone (all our boats are equipped with one for emergencies) but nobody was picking up the phone (they couldn’t be bothered…). Assuming a break down of the engine or some other kind of emergency she arranged for another boat to go out and help our divers (that’s another nice thing here at the beach, most dive center work together. In this case, thank you Seaquest Dive Center). When the “Rescue” Boat arrived the whale shark swam off. That was a really nice whale shark encounter, and in the evening, when everybody sat together end exchanged stories, the size of the whale shark increased with every beer consumed.Thank you Silke and Jojo for the nice pictures.

Whale Shark with baby - Video on YouTube

Click here for nice video from a whale shark encounter just on our house reef from Patrick Devine. What makes this video special is that you can see a tiny whale shark baby beneath the big one at the end of the video. The picture is from Yoris, a dive instructor who spend a lot of time in Moalboal and is now in the Maldives, I think.

The other day Jesper (owner of Neptune Dive Center), Lars (one of the owners of the Chili Bar) and some other divers had an encounter with 4 whale sharks in Sunken Island. This is unheard of and supports our impression that we have more whale sharks, and turtles, than before.

Of course they celebrated in Chili for the rest of the day.

Thresher Shark at White Beach

Our lovely dive master Maricel just came back for a dive at White Beach. We had already several whale shark encounters this week. But this time we had something special, a huge tresher shark. Unfortunatly Maricel dirdn’t bring her camera on this dive. This encounter is insofar uncommon since Moalboal is not known for thresher sharks. There are there, but usually only seen by out Tekkies in depth greater than 70m. The picture you see here is courtesy of Achim from www.artifishal.com, who visisted us some years ago.

Here is some info on thresher sharks from Wikipedia:

Named for and easily recognised by their exceptionally long, thresher-like tail or caudal fins (which account for 1/3 (33%) of their total body length), thresher sharks are active predators; the tail is actually used as a weapon to stun prey. By far the largest of the three species is the Common thresher, Alopias vulpinus, which may reach a length of 7.6 m (25 ft) and a weight of 348 kg (767 lb). The Bigeye thresher, Alopias superciliosus, is next in size, reaching a length of 4.9 m (16 ft); at just 3 m (10 ft), the Pelagic thresher, Alopias pelagicus, is the smallest. Thresher sharks are fairly slender, with small dorsal fins and large, recurved pectoral fins. With the exception of the Bigeye thresher, these sharks have relatively small eyes. Coloration ranges from brownish, bluish or purplish gray dorsally with lighter shades ventrally.

More info at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thresher_shark

Whale Sharks

The whale sharks are back. We had 2 sightings yesterday, one at Kasay Point early morning and one at Sampaguita late afternoon. Diving conditions are excellent at the moment anyway, bright sunshine and visibility up to 30m (100f).
For more info about shale sharks in Moalboal check out http://www.savedra.com/shark.htm