Snorkeling with the biggest sharks in the world

– Oslob, The Philippines –

Just before leaving The Philippines me and my family took a boat back to Cebu (as I told in my Siquijor post).

https://tuvasworld.com/2018/01/17/my-week-at-siquijor-the-philippines/

We came to this little city called Oslob that is famous for the whalesharks they have. Everytime me and my family travels I always set a goal before leaving my home country. My goal for this holiday was to swim with this huge creatures.

 

So early in the morning we took our motorcycles we had rented and drove down to this famous place. If you go later in the day it will be crowded so we had planned to go as early as possible! Before heading out with the boats they give you information about the whalesharks and if you in some way touch them you have to pay a bill. (I don’t know how much, but just don’t do it cause it’s probably pretty expensive and our bacteria is bad for the whales!).

 

 

Whalesharks are the largest living sharks on earth and also the largest known of all fish species. The largest confirmed whaleshark was up to 12.65 m!!! (That is insane!!!) We saw around 12 sharks and those were probably around 9 or 10m.

It’s so hard to in a way try to explain for you how it is to be in the same water as these! They feel so unreal! And are so beautiful! <33

To make the whalesharks come back to the same place, they feed them. Which may be a bad thing because that means the whalesharks stop hunting and it destroys their natural way of living! And that’s not something I would be happy to participate in but this may have been a “ones in a life time” experience (unless I go back to Oslob some other time).

But the good thing is that those who feed the whales and get payed for it learn to take care of the ocean because otherwise they won’t have a job anymore. And all people who pay for swimming with these incredible animals (as me) get a better picture of the ocean and how precious and kind these creatures actually are, which hopefully will make people more willing to work for a better future for the ocean and maybe make them understand that we’re actually hurting these animals on purpose and that’s not okay!

This was truly the coolest thing I’ve ever done! And I’m so happy for this experience! Afterwards we ate some breakfast at a restaurant with this view <33 The first day of 2018 couldn’t have started better!!

XO Tuva