Whale Sharks = Awesome

This weekend was pretty good over all. I mean, I did after all get to dive with an endangered species, and well, to put it bluntly, that is pretty fucking cool.

Jason and I went out on Saturday with Chelsea and her husband and a few of their friends on the Whale Shark Dive offered over at Torii station. We arrived at 12:00 and then found out we were supposed to be there at 12:30. Then we waited for everyone to show up and filled out some paperwork. Once that was done we sat through a 3 minute brief on what we were going to do and watched part of a video of someone else doing the dive quite a few years ago.

Then it was time for more waiting. There was a lot of that for something Torii organizes everyday. Once that round of waiting was done we caravaned down to the Yomitan Port where we assembled our gear and got it into the dive boat. Our boat was a combination of Americans, Japanese and Chinese and about half scuba divers and half snorkelers.

It was a quick 5 minute boat ride out to the net off the coast. The net is about 200 ft wide and 65 feet tall. There were two male whale sharks in the net at this time, one was 18 feet long and the other 22 feet long. The whale sharks in the net are rehabilitated and/or exchanges from the aquarium here on Okinawa and in mainland. As the fishermen often find whale sharks in their nets they need to be rehabilitated and so they are sent here. That and Japan is trying really really hard to get footage of whale sharks mating or birthing as no one has ever seen it. Ever. Private folks I guess.

So once we arrived there was a bit of scrambling to get out gear on and roll over the side into the water. Once everyone was in and underwater holding onto the net they opened a small hole and let us in one at a time. Once we were all in and now holding onto the inside of the net they started to feed the whale sharks. This all seems to be for show really, and it gives the snorkelers a good show otherwise a whale shark would never stay up there.

So they feed them for 15 minutes and we watch and take pictures. Then once that is done it is time for free swim. We get to swim around in the net with the whale sharks at our leisure. We are not supposed to touch them, but they are allowed to touch us. Since the whale sharks think every scuba diver is a feeder, that happens quite a bit.

Once we were out and swimming about it was much easier to get pictures. Unfortunately visibility was only like 40 feet and so it was a bit harder to catch any good pictures. They also keep one whale shark occupied at the top pretty much the whole time so the snorkelers get a good show. He is hard to watch because you have to watch out not to take a tail to the face. You really only get to see his shadow against the sun, which is still pretty cool. I would have preferred they not do the whole top thing, but that was because I was down below sucking air and trying to get some awesome pictures.

Sometimes you would be photographing one shark and the other would come out of nowhere, and I am not gonna lie, when a huge 22 foot long whale shark is coming at you open mouthed or his tail is whipping by your head, you scream a little inside your regulator. Not a scream of abject terror, but a scream of wide eyed holly crap that was awesome.

So before I knew it they were making us go back to the boat. I still had over 1500 psi of air and was a bit disgruntled about that but, well, I already knew it was only going to be 30 minutes. I did hang back and was one of the last folk on the boat so I got to watch them for a while from the outside of the net while everyone else was loading.

It was well worth the $115 for the chance to swim with whale sharks and I would do it again in all honesty. It could be cooler, but I will take what I can get, considering they charge $3000 for it in Australia.

Today Jason and I did another dive at Tengan Pier but there wasn't too much special about that other than that my reg was leaking air. I think it got damaged on the boat dive and I need to take it in. This wasn't really a problem today because the dive was shallow and I still finished with more air than Jason. The nudibranches were everywhere out there today and most of them mating which was cool. But it sort of paled in comparison to yesterdays Whale Shark adventure.

If you want to see the pictures they are up on Facebook, I only have like 2-3 really good ones but I can still enjoy it in my brain! Whale Sharks are awesome, diving with them, awesomer!