Hunting the Whaleshark (July '08)

In 2008, about the time I had planned to be swimming with the world's biggest fish, I was instead sitting at a BBQ table, legs pulled up on the seat, drinking goon from a blue plastic picnic mug.

I was devastated.

Lyndall and I had traveled all this way for only the purpose of this swim, and a near monsoonal front was delivering high wind and rain, buffeting down on our hostel. The covered BBQ area that we occupied only transferred the odd spray of rain towards our centrally placed table, which was an island above the uniform three inches of water that covered the entire courtyard. The goon was cheap and made the situation easier to bare, even if the real cost is always paid the next morning.

The root problem was that said hostel was in very close proximity to the body of water our boat could only operate on in swells less than three metres, and it appeared that conditions weren't going to be favourable for days to come. Aside from trying unsuccessfully to stay dry, we spent that afternoon trying to rearrange our trip to accommodate this disaster.

The town was Exmouth, and the month was July. Hundreds of kilometers from anywhere, it's a town whose prominence rests on the nearby coastline, which is home to the longest fringing coral reef in the world - Ningaloo. It's not an easy place to get to by any means, and we'd shacked up overnight in Perth waiting for our connecting prop plane to convert lots of our hard earned cash into the 1500kms between the two. What books the hotels around here solid at this time of year is that this is the only place in the world that multitudes of whaleshark reliably congregate each year, for the grand and worthy purpose of nomming on bucket-loads of delicious plankton.

Vlamingh Head Lighthouse

Planning to drive back to Perth over the next week and a half, the weather proved to be a considerably large spanner. Exmouth is a miserable place to be waiting when you can't go outside, so the next best option we were facing was to instead spend a week traveling to Broome and back - then trying our luck with the weather in Exmouth one more time, before significantly increasing the profit outlook on the local regional airline for our passage back to Perth. Luckily our worries were unfounded with the weather coming good the next day, so we found ourselves instead waiting out in the Indian Ocean on a boat.

Cape Range NP

That's because hunting whaleshark is all about waiting. Despite the numbers in the area, its not every day they decide to venture to the surface for a feed. Planes fly the coast daily to spot whaleshark for the flotilla of vessels full of tourists like us. After killing a few hours snorkeling inside Ningaloo, the call came through that the banquet was being held some fourty kilometres to the south. And then the waiting starts a new.

Some two hours later our boat joined the small queue of craft waiting to dump their passengers into the path of the whaleshark. It's a very orderly process; when your boat gets to the front of that queue, they get to drop the regulated ten people into the water who then madly kick as long as they can to keep up with the shark once it passes them. The boat then circles back and picks up passengers when they've fallen from the trail.

It's a daunting feeling, sitting on the rear of the vessel waiting to hit the water. It's certainly not like you could do-it-yourself and swim from the shore. We're kilometers out to sea, and the rich, dark blue abyss extends to eternity beneath you. Even a seasoned madman like me gets to wondering what else might be lurking in those depths. Or if the plane mistakenly called in an oversize tiger shark.

But you don't come this far and hesitate, so I'm soon in the spreading wake of the boat, kicking in the direction I had to blindly accept as the correct one. At first you can't see much more than the turbulence kicked up by the flippers of your fellow swimmers, but as you spread out, you find yourself staring expectantly into the open water. It's hard not to let your heart race when you see shadow and shape forming from the sapphire haze, especially a mass as big as a whaleshark.

The first priority is to get out of its way. Aside from not wanting to collide with its bulk or its largely inert but potential power, swimming straight at the sharks tend to make them dive for deeper water. Being eaten isn't of so much concern unless you're near the size of a phytoplankton. Safely out of its path, the goal is then to turn and swim with the animal for as long as you can keep up.

The whaleshark is a slow and graceful beast in the marine world. Their enormous mass glides easily through the water on a tail movement that could best be described as "Sunday morning stroll". That said, it is incredibly hard for human legs to come anywhere near matching their slow pace. But its and incredibly serene experience to share the water with the gentle giant.

Falling off the trail, you bob around in the water with your co swimmers waiting for the boat, hoping that safety in numbers means something to whatever else could be swimming beyond your vision. Then you keenly await your next drop off.

(this isn't just some random's video... we're in there somewhere)

With six or seven drops, there's so many ways to enjoy the experience. Swimming alongside the sharks massive, drooping pectoral fin - stopping in the water to just watch it pass - slipping into its wake and watching the gentle but powerful movement of its tail. But no matter how you wish for more, six or seven swims is enough to exhaust any but the most accomplished Olympic swimmer. By the end it's a real effort to pull yourself back onto the deck.

At the end of the day it's a long way home, but it's easy enough to loose time starring back across the waves after a solid experience like that. A large tray of nibblies often helps, too. Beers are had in the warm tropical air that night, a sense of comfort returning to the trip. And in twelve hours we'd be jammed into our Hyundai Getz, cruising south again on the open red plains, searching for the next box to tick.