Swimming with Whale Sharks

Full disclosure: I am extremely behind on blogging. I guess it’s a good problem that I’ve been too busy and having too much fun to blog. But even as I sit here in a completely different country on the other side of the world five weeks later, I cannot stop thinking about our weekend in Cebu. Let me tell you about our wild weekend!

Nothing about our flight, our hotel or our meals matter; they’re simply not worth mentioning. What mattered then (and what matters now): we were picked up at 5:00am on Saturday morning for our excursion. For about three hours, our driver took us across the island of Cebu as the sun rose.

When we arrived in Oslob, our guide escorted us to the most picturesque beachside restaurant. We enjoyed a simple Filipino breakfast: fresh mango and sticky rice. Meadows ate the rice, and I ate the mango!

From here, we left our belongings behind and headed for the ocean. But this wasn’t our typical swim… we were headed to SWIM WITH WHALE SHARKS!!!

After a brief safety lesson, in which they mentioned about 4,000 times that a whale shark cannot and will not eat you (their esophagus is only about a few inches wide), we put on our snorkel gear and hopped in a boat.

Meadows and I were both pretty pumped for this excursion; but, admittedly, we both got a little freaked out when we saw how big these guys were from above the water. And regardless of what the safety presentation said, we naturally felt a bit nervous when dealing with these massive wild animals …especially when they swim around with their giant mouths open!

But like everything else in life, we jumped in! Within seconds, one of the whale sharks rubbed up against me! One of the rules is that you’re not supposed to touch them, but there’s nothing that says they can’t touch you.

We began snapping photos immediately, trying (and usually failing) to capture such large fish in one frame. I determined that videos documented this phenomenon better than any photo ever could. The whale sharks move surprisingly quickly and smoothly through the water, gliding around you. We finally understood why everyone called them “gentle giants.”

You wouldn’t expect something so large to sneak up on you, but they do! Thankfully, the guys in charge do a good job of calling out “behind you!” or “look left!” so that a huge whale shark doesn’t catch you off guard.

The entire time, I wavered between the urge to swim with my new friends and the realization that I am tiny compared to these massive creatures and need to stay back. This video captures my change of plans perfectly:

When it was time to get back in the boat, we snapped some final pictures and said goodbye to our giant friends.

Our full-day excursion wasn’t over yet; we headed to a nearby waterfall for “cool down.” We needed a rest after all of the excitement of the whale sharks!

After sufficiently cooling down, we made our way back to the beachside restaurant. We enjoyed a late lunch with so many options: a full grilled fish, adobo chicken, sticky rice, pork belly, egg rolls and more! An ice cold Coca-Cola in a glass bottle rounded off the meal fabulously.

As our final moments in Oslob drew to a close, we took a photograph with the whale shark excursion boats in the background! Then, we hopped back in the car for our three-hour trek to the other side of the island. Six hours in the car in one day? 100% worth it when you get to swim with whale sharks!

Facts about whale sharks:

• They are the largest fish in the world
• Filipinos use the words “tuki” or “butanding” for whale shark
• The largest confirmed whale shark had a length of 12.65 m (41.5 ft) and a weight of about 21.5 t (47,000 lb)
• Whale sharks eat plankton almost exclusively
• They have 300+ rows of teeth, which they do not use for feeding
• In case my photos didn’t provide proper scale for you, here is a size comparison of a human to a whale shark:

By Matt Martyniuk – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Whale Shark