We FINALLY had our Whale Shark encounter...something I've wanted to do for years and something that George has wanted to do since he was a little boy and learned (in the Guiness Book of World Records) that they are the largest fish on earth. We went with a small group 2 hours off the shore of Cancun.. past Isla Mujeres and Isla Contoy. The water was like glass...disturbed only by an occasional giant manta ray (the mantas themselves were 8-10 feet across). It wasn't long before we spotted several whale sharks. The one we swam with (tagged #662 by the Mexican Whale Shark Project) was a 25-30 foot female. Simply awesome. We took turns swimming with her for hours as she fed on plankton at the surface. Her tail, from top to bottom, stood almost 8 feet tall (and when it brushed up against George he said it was like bumping into a brick wall). It's difficult to get a sense of her size from most of these photos, but you can see our guide scraping the barnacles from her tag in one of the last photos.

No comments:
Post a Comment