I came to Koh Tao knowing that this is the season for the famous whale sharks, sharks that feed like whales, largest fish in the ocean, but blocked it from my mind so that I would not get disappointed if I did not see them.
Pauliina hassled me yesterday to sign up for this morning's dive, I was tired after the physics exam, so I felt I deserved a lie in, so I owe her a massive beer tonight, as I swam with a little whale shark 5 times today!!
We went to Chumphon Pinnacle about 11km from Koh Tao. The first dive was suppose to be working on my mapping a dive site for my DMT, but Jason and I kind of got lost and we decided to go back to the boat. We had just seen a really big fish getting its morning clean from the cleaner fish and were quite excited at how big it was. It was then that I saw something behind him so I then signed to him that he had to look over his shoulder. A massive whale was swimming right towards us ARRRGGGH!!! (I said in a stream of bubbles). I was low on air at this point but no way was I going to let a little thing like safety and training get in the way of this, we swam with it for a while (while I kept an eye on my pressure gauge) in the end after 10 minutes it swam too deep for us to see so I signed to Jason that we had to go up. I inflated my safety sausage (a orange colored device that let people know that you are coming up) and after inflating it realized that no air was coming out of my regulator..... very calmly (I am proud to say) I signed to Jason that I was out of air and that I needed to take his second regulator, thank god for good training lol, all went well, I even managed to inflate my BCD manually. (Sorry it if this means nothing to most people).
I felt like a bit of a dick failing at safety on my first time leading a dive but hell you don't see a whale shark every day.
We then got on the boat shouting with every one else. "That was fantastic man, way cool, etc", when the boat next to us started pointing to the sea and all the people on that boat jumped in with snorkels, so of course we all did as well, The whale shark was so curious that he/she came back to the boat and let 20 odd people swim on the surface with him/her. It was the most amazing experience of my life: just fantastic. The shark was very calm and graceful and the eyes looked very intelligent. My hand accidentally brushed along its body and it had very hard muscle and rough skin like a snake or elephant.
This is a picture of a whale shark but not taken by us
We had to wait for an hour before we could go diving again, all of us thinking that it would have gone by then, at that point all the other boats had left and we were alone, of course people had been phoning and radioing shore so lots of boat were on their way.
Jason and I kitted up and we threw ourselves back into the water, and for 30 minutes we had no sign of the fish, but again it appeared and swam with all the divers for a while, just before I had to go up (I did not want to run our of air this time). The shark swam straight towards me and opened it mouth to feed... no not me, its a squid eater, but still it was amazing to look right into its mouth.
We all went to celebrate at the coffee boat and I met El's yoga, an ex-dive instructor that had over 3000 dives in Koh Toa and had never seen a whale shark, either she is incredibly unlucky or I am fantastically massively lucky myself.
Over the moon so I am sorry if this entry is a little rushed, or maybe it is just the large Chang I just had :-)
Some guys were down there with video and cameras, from other dive schools, so we are going to go on a massive hunt later and try to get some footage, it would be so cool to upload that to youtube! watch this space.
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