Swimming with whale sharks has been on my to-do list for many years now, and this is one more thing I can now cross off.

It was a full day out at sea and while we were waiting for our spotter plane to spot some whale sharks, we had a few swims along the way. A few of us jumped in to swim with Tuna that were feeding on the surface. This was all well and good until someone yelled “Shark” and I looked down and there was a bloody great big shark. I freaked out and decided to head back to the boat but there was another bloody great big shark in my way. I looked around me and there were about 5 or 6 bloody great sharks circling below us. And these weren’t tiny reef sharks; they were really big real things, more than twice the size of me.

The boat was about 300 metres away, and I was scared to break away from the other snorkellers (who by the way, seemed to think seeing sharks was cool) but I really didn’t like having these horrid things swimming below me. They reckon they are just inquisitive, but I reckon they were eyeing us up for a feeding frenzy. I decided to make the break and swam as fast as I could back to the boat, with my eyes shut so I wouldn’t have to look at them. Luckily Mike was safely on board, saving his energy for the swim with whale sharks.

About 1pm, just as we were eating lunch, we got the call that a whale shark had been spotted. How it works is the boat gets in front of the whale shark. A spotter jumps in the water. When they say, “GO”, 10 swimmers jump in the water at the same time and swim like crazy toward the spotter. Then when you are wondering where the whale shark is, it comes gently cruising past you, about 1 metre away. It’s really cool. The whale shark was a fairly small one, only 3.5 metres, but was awesome all the same. We got to jump in as many times as we liked for up to 1 hour. It was hard work though trying to keep up with it.

The photos aren’t really the best, but it is hard trying to enjoy the shark and take photos at the same time.

This is one of its head: