whale shark under boat II

this young boy of 3-4 meters was very friendly. we didn't have to find it, it found us and swam under and around the boat for 20 minutes. this gave our skipper justin his first chance to swim with a whale shark. he didn't even need to put his fins on.


to find out the sex of the whale shark i had to duck dive right next to it. usually whale sharks bank or turn their back towards you for defence if you come to close. this shark didn't bother at all, it even turned its belly towards me.

for more information about this shark click here: A-393

whale shark A-391

one of my first whale sharks this year - a 4m female. for more information about this shark click here: A-391

whale shark under boat

today i swam with my first whale shark this year! a very special one, too. probably my best whale shark encounter in 9 years of sharking at ningaloo reef. i was out on my own boat late in the afternoon when i found an 9m shark feeding in a bait ball surrounded by reef sharks and a manta ray just off south passage. my girlfriend fränzi and me swam with it for about half an hour.

at some stage the shark found our 5m runabout more interesting than the bait ball. it swam off towards the drifting boat, circled a few times under the hull...

...and finally gave it a kiss on the side with its head out of the water. it even pushed the boat around a few meters while fränzi sat on the boat.

it was fränzi's first ever whale shark - can you be more lucky?!

boccia with kangaroos

camping in the beautiful cape range national park is always good fun and very relaxing. my girlfriend fränzi and me really enjoyed a game of boule on the beach just before sunset.

at some stage fränzi and me had to stop playing - it was just getting too dangerous for our friendly referee...

whale sharks of ningaloo

for the next few months i'll be filming whale sharks every day (hopefully...).

ningaloo reef is privileged to be one of the few places in the world known to be visited by the mysterious whale shark (rhincodon typus) on a regular basis. each year, just days after the mass spawning of corals on the ningaloo reef in march and april, whale sharks appear in the waters along the front of the reef, remaining for up to a month. it is thought that they come to feed on an explosion of marine life that feeds on the coral spawn. most of these visiting whale sharks are immature males. it remains an intriguing puzzle why this particular section of the population visits our coast.

whale sharks will grow to over 12 metres in length, which is about the size of a large bus. whale sharks are not aggressive, they cruise the oceans feeding on concentrations of zooplankton, small fish and squid. whale sharks occur world-wide in tropical and temperate seas and are thought to be highly migratory. however, there is little information currently available on this aspect of their behaviour. also, the population is unknown and the species is considered vulnerable. for better understanding (and better protection) of the whale shark it is important to collect as much data as possible. a few years ago a non-profit organisation called ecocean introduced a worldwide photo identification library. in the next few weeks, i'll report all my whale shark encounters to ecocean and you'll also find some of them here in my blog.