This morning we woke early, ready to go swim with whale sharks for the first time. We were anchored inside the huge Saleh Bay (more like a sea, at 50 miles deep and 10 miles across) that was well known for housing whale sharks. The experience falls somewhere underneath a true natural experience, and a zoo. The whales are free, but they are fed. And once an animal is fed it’s not exactly wild any longer. That said, it’s not as if they are being fed leftover potato chips from tourists. This is a relatively new industry here (2018 I believe) and I’m sure isn’t without its ethical dilemmas.

Our tour guide didn’t show up (boat problems), but these two did, and they seemed happy to be there. These boats have some sort of Chinese tractor style motor in them. There is no battery, no starter, and no transmission. They hand crank it to start, and once it’s moving the only way to go to neutral is to kill the engine. It’s quite a marvel to watch them in action with that rusting hulk of metal housed under a tarp.

They drove us about 30 minutes (it’s usually 2 hours from the tourists who are coming from the village, but from the boats it was much closer) out to this massive contraption. Apparently, from what I understand, this boat does double duty as a shrimp boat and a whale feeding station. I think if there had been whales here we would have stayed put, but instead they raised anchor (another incredible feat of engineering and manual labor) and drove this thing straight out to sea. We felt like we were living in a scene from Waterworld. Nobody talked to us, because of the language barrier. Instead we were just smiled at and motioned to move to different areas. At this point I don’t think we even realized that the guide we had hired wasn’t with us.

Notice the dashboard instruments.

Anchor winch motor. Ingenuity at its finest.

The Waterworld feeling only got stronger as we approached the feeding platform.

And there was a whale shark, having a long drink/feed underneath the boat.

When we first jumped in there were quite a few people around, but it quickly thinned out. This was not an operation that was well suited to weak swimmers. I actually feared for the lives of some of the people we’d see in the water over the next hour or two. There’s zero oversight by guides and there is a lot of activity in waters that are essentially open ocean. Weak swimmers with no flippers and ill-fitting masks and snorkels definitely felt like a recipe for disaster.

When the water cleared out it gave us time to really take in this magnificent creature up close.

When this gang rocked up we knew it was time to go. The water became a seething froth of shiny white butt cheeks, not a single pair of which looked to have ever soaked in the ocean before. I doubt any of these people saw the whale sharks—they were way too busy just trying to stay alive by holding onto the side of our boat.

All told, it was a very fun day for all of us. Our guide eventually did show up, in this smaller boat, and explained how there had been “engine trouble” that morning. That wasn’t much of a surprise. As for the whale sharks themselves, hopefully this new industry continues to improve. Supposedly the risk to the whale sharks—namely that by being fed they will no longer migrate for food—isn’t a problem with these sharks because they didn’t migrate outside of the bay previously, either. I did read that their numbers have increased slightly, as well—possibly due to not being killed by fishermen any longer, and instead being used as a source of income. Time will tell, I suppose. I feel honored to have gotten to swim alongside these gentle giants, and would go out of my way in our future travels to try and find them in an even more natural environment. To see them while scuba diving must be the ultimate thrill.