At about 9 meters into our slow ascent towards the surface,
I was, as usual, preoccupied with buoyancy. Our instructor had gone on ahead,
leading the way out. My buddy was about 2 meters above me and to my left. I
looked up and signaled to him to come back down as he was too high, when I
could see a shadow cover him.
I looked for the source of the shadow as it moved
forward and saw the bottom of a broad mouth of what I first though was a Manta-ray.
As the shadow lengthened so did the image. It became clear from the size of the
image and that distinctive dorsal fin, that it was a shark and a large one at
that. My signal to my buddy became more urgent and included pointing to the
shark above his head. He looked up, saw what it was.
Before he had time to react, the shark turned its head and I
could have sworn that I caught its eye. When it turned I could see its side.
More importantly, I could not see a clearly defined mechanosensory lateral line
system, so distinct on more aggressive species of shark. Instead I noticed the
dot pattern that identified this creature as a Whale Shark (Rhinocodon typus):
The fact that it was only around 4 meters in length concerned
me. I thought for a moment that if this was the baby, then where was its mother?
I learned later that Whale Sharks are solitary creatures and leave their
mothers at quite an early age. Its curiosity satisfied and as quickly as we had
seen it, the Whale Shark drifted effortlessly out of sight.
At the time, we were the only ones left underwater. Everybody
else was on the shore. All they saw was the dorsal fin on the surface. When we reached the
shore, they told us that they knew that four of had gone down and were
wondering how many of us would surface.
Later, we learned that Whale Shark sightings were extremely
rare. No recreational diver at the site that day had ever seen one in its
natural habitat. Our instructor said that he had only seen one after about 1000
dives. Our assistant instructor said that it was high on her must see list and
she could now tick it off.
The day was not, after-all, a total failure. We had seen the
worlds largest fish, as up-close and as personal as one could ever get. Dewa
Baruna had indeed smiled upon us.
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