Whale shark at Chumporn Pinnacle today!

Whale shark at Chumporn Pinnacle today!

Today was the last day that I could complete the second Deep dive of Richard's Deep dive Instructor Specialty, before he leaves for the Netherlands again and I start another IDC in a couple of days.

Off we went to Chumporn Pinnacle, near Koh Tao. A site well known for Bull Shark sightings, even with a blog dedicated to Bull Sharks a this site and also well know for Whale Shark sightings.



After the deep dive, during our deco stops, sure enough, there it was, a Whale Shark. The first sighting we had was at 15 meters and it was swimming above us.
During a staged 8 minute deco stop at 5 meters, the Whale Shark returned and swam around us for a while and at some stage it came directly at us!

This baby was not camera shy at all! Here it is literally in front of my camera.

Here's the Whale Shark swimming underneath me.

This picture shows the Shark moving away from us again. It was Richard's first Whale Shark and he got some good shots in. he was pretty happy about this dive!

This picture shows the Whale Shark swimming away with Richard's camera at the side.

When we were back on the boat, the Shark surfaced and bumped almost into some students that still were in the water.

As the second dive of the day we completed a AWARE Fish ID dive, which happens to be the PADI Specialty of the month for this August! During this dive we both shot some very good pix again, but the Whale Shark was the talk of the day!

Usefull Whale shark websites;

Ecocean - Whale Shark photo identification library

Project AWARE Whale Shark Project

Camille