Sentient Giant

One of the absolute highlights of my life has been to swim with the whale sharks at Ningaloo Marine Park, off Coral Bay. I did it back in 2016. These gentle giants of the ocean visit Ningaloo every year from around April to late July, when the coral spawn and plankton blooms, providing a rich source of food. It’s mostly juvenile males that frequent Ningaloo, each between 6-9m and 9-11tonnes. They can dive down to almost 2km in search of food and embark of some of the longest migrations in the animal kingdom. And an interesting fact, each whale shark’s skin pattern, of beautiful spots and stripes, is as unique as our fingerprints. By recording these patterns, researchers are able to identify individuals and track their journeys. And they also give birth to live “pups”. But they are still very much a mystery of the ocean, as we don’t know exactly how long they live, where most of the adult females reside and where they give birth. The experience of swimming alongside these serene stunning creatures out in the deep ocean is spine tingling stuff

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