Marc's Public Blog - Diving

So, the story goes that the local fishermen started feeding the whalesharks to keep them away from where they were fishing, because they were getting in the way. Eventually they grew to like them, and figured it was better to feed them and show them to tourists than to fish.

Snorklers get to wait a long time and spend only 10-15m in the water. Divers however get to spend whatever time they'd like (1h+ for us) and see them underwater for real. I've always been told that whalesharks don't like bubbles (which is true of sharks), but those not only didn't mind, but at least some actually liked our bubbles. One of them followed us away from the food to swim around us and dance in our bubbles.

As for the question of whether this prevents the whales from otherwise eating naturally, they only get fed in the morning, and they do migrate away to live and eat elsewhere, so it doesn't seem to be a real problem. I'm hopeful that it's a net positive, especially if it gets all those people to use the money to live instead of (over-)fishing.
Still, as I found out later, the place remains controversial, at best, more details here: http://dive-bohol.com/conservation/5-reasons-not-go-oslob
I went with a gopro for filming in the left hand, and took pictures with my camera in the right hand. I then took a few screen grabs from the 4K video to supplement the pictures taken by the camera.

So, speaking of pictures:

Here's a 4K video of the encounters:

And more pictures below:

sadly, our friend whale shark had a lot of parasites on it

Half way through the dive, we had to reposition and noticed 2 cuttlefish at the bottom, one was doing a very good weed impression:

don't look at me, I'm a weed

Back to whalesharks:

this one loved bubbles

yeah, bubbles

not just one, but 2, then 3, and up to 7 whalesharks

chasing bubbles again

So that was it, it was a lot of fun and the shalesharks seemed happy enough, at least with us, divers.