Whale Shark!

It’s April 2001, I’m sitting in a beach bar on a small Thai island in the Gulf of Siam. The sun is setting and the sky is a mosaic of colours: reds, blues, purples, oranges and yellows. The atmospheric conditions round here often conspire to paint such breathtaking sunsets, the like of which I’ve never seen anywhere else in the world.

I’m travelling with my friend Bruce enroute to see our mutual friend Paul in Auckland, New Zealand. It was my idea to make a short stop-over on Koh Tao; this will be my third visit to this little known ‘gemstone set in a sapphire sea’ since first discovering it in 1993. A true diver’s paradise, it is where I first learnt the veritable art of SCUBA and qualified for my PADI Open Water certification. We’d had to make a stop-over in Bangkok anyway and I really wanted Bruce to experience the delights that Koh Tao has to offer, plus I’d get to do some serious diving in one of my most favourite spots in the whole world. All this with the added bonus that now I had risen in the ranks and become a qualified Rescue Diver.

Problem is I hadn’t figured on Bruce putting his back out on our first night here. There we were sitting on the balcony outside his room, smoking the local Thai weed. We were sitting on the cheap sort of molded plastic garden chairs that are seemingly ubiquitous now. Bruce leans back on his chair to put his feet up on the balcony rail and then BANG! The back feet of the chair slip forward on the glossy tiled flooring and Bruce is lying flat on his back groaning in pain and can’t get up. Well, as soon as I’d stopped laughing hysterically (I’m sorry but I suffer terribly from schadenfreude!). I pulled him up and managed to get him onto the bed in his room.

The next day Bruce couldn’t walk because of his back pain, so I arranged for the local doctor to visit him and then get a masseuse sent to his room. I also had to put my own plans for diving on hold as I didn’t think it was fair for me to disappear all day whilst Bruce was in so much pain. This continued for the next few days and each day that passed my opportunities for diving grew less and less likely.

So now here I am sitting in a beach bar the evening before the day I have to leave this island, admiring the sunset. Tomorrow is my last chance to dive and, as Bruce is getting better and walking around fairly well now, I’ve booked a dive trip for the morning to Chumporn Pinnacle. I’m drinking beer with some of the people I’ll be diving with tomorrow and generally having pleasant conversation. ‘D’you know!’ I announce to the assembled divers ‘I have a feeling in my gut we’ll see a Whale Shark tomorrow’. ‘Yeah, yeah’ comes back the chortled retort from the skeptics amassed before me‘…and we’ll be ducking the flying pigs!’ ‘Nevertheless’ I say ‘you mark my words, my instincts are rarely wrong. Who wants another drink?’

Next morning we board the boat to take us out to Chumporn Pinnacle. It will be my third time diving at that particular spot over the years. Basically it’s a kind of underwater mountain with a very pointed top which lies a couple of metres below the surface. On the slopes of the mountain are coral gardens and beautiful underwater seascapes with multitudinous varieties and species of fish. It’s a beautiful day, the sun is shining, and I listen intently to the dive briefing with the wind whistling past my face as we scud over the waves.

As soon as the boat comes to rest about 20 minutes later my ‘buddy’, for this dive only, (diving etiquette requires that you always dive as one of a pair so that you can watch over one another- you pair up together as ‘buddies’) Malcolm and I are already kitted up and keen to be the first in the water. Another boat has since arrived at the site and those divers are already starting to enter the water.

Malcolm takes a ‘giant stride’ off the boat holding his mask tightly in place with one hand and holding his gauges, second stage regulator and dangling straps tightly to his chest with the other. I follow, in exactly the same fashion, as soon as he’s clear of the boat. As I rise back towards the surface of the water after my plunge, surrounded by tiny air bubbles there is a shout from some of the divers already in the water from the second boat. ‘Whale Shark...WHALE SHARK!’

Malcolm looks at me and grins behind his mask, I grin inanely back from behind mine. I give the ‘thumbs down’ hand signal that we should descend. He signals ‘OK’ back with his first finger and thumb forming a circle and the other three fingers erect above it. We press the deflator button attached to our BCD (buoyancy control device) jackets and descend rapidly fins first. Visibility below the surface is great. About 20 meters before everything merges into a deep blue haze. To our left we see a group of four divers swimming rapidly towards a very large black shape still blurring in the blue haze. We head in that direction and the shape emerges from amongst the blue background, sharpening in focus gradually. My breathing quickens with the excitement and I consciously try to calm down to preserve my air and thus lengthen my dive. We swim closer to the Whale Shark and it comes into very sharp focus…

Wow! It’s magnificent! It’s really only a baby but still incredibly awesome to see at this proximity. We are no more than 2 meters away from it and can clearly see the Remora fish hitching a ride on its underside. It glides slowly past us, all 7 meters of it and then we are looking at its huge but slow and elegantly pumping tail. As I said: it’s a baby, these things are reputed to grow to about 18 meters in length. We chase it for a while surrounded by other divers who have also come to realize that this could be one of their greatest dives ever. I head it off as it turns gracefully following the contours of the underwater pinnacle and get a look at its huge mouth; almost 1 metre wide and specifically designed for filter feeding (krill etc.). I marvel at the near perfect matrix of white spots on its back, giving this ‘largest fish in the ocean’ its most distinctive markings. I reel off many, many photographs, some of which will come to grace the wall of my bathroom later and then after what seems like only a few minutes into the dive I glance at my air gauge. Shit! I’m down to about 50 bars already; I’ve been down here 25 minutes already. Moreover, all the excitement has made me use up my air much more quickly. I signal to Malcolm to check his air too. He signals back that he’s on 50 bars also….we really should have started heading for the surface 20 bars ago. I signal the ‘thumbs up’ to tell him we should ascend and he give’s me an ‘OK’ sign in affirmation.

We hang around for the required safety stop for 3 minutes at 5 meters depth and whilst I’m suspended there watching the other divers from 20 metres above, chasing the whale shark and snapping pictures, I start to grin to myself. I wish I could explain this to Malcolm right now but it’ll have to wait until we surface. I have this sudden notion of seeing things from the Whale Shark's viewpoint. Here he is surrounded by divers in awe of his size and power and strength and just the sheer spectacle of seeing an almost prehistoric creature up close and personal and they’re all thinking…Wow amazing. A real live Whale Shark!...and he’s thinking...Fuck me! Will you look at all those underwater swimming monkeys!