Clips of the 25-30' Whale Shark encounter off the north coast of Utila, Bay Islands, Honduras.

1. I had a red filter on the camcorder lens to add back red once I was under 10' of water. I did not have time to think about taking the red filter off before getting on the chase dingy.

2. As soon as Teresa entered the water with a back-first entry, she was face-to-face with the whale shark until it decided to swim under her. So, she had to get her fins out of the way so that she wouldn't "hurt" it.

3. Around Utila, Whale Sharks are usually found in the "boil" of small tuna attaching the bait fish that feed on the same type of plankton. They hang perpendicular to the surface to slurp the top layer where that particular type of plankton is found. They can't breath in that position, so they have to swim a little while to catch their breath. Then, they re-surface and start slurping again. The divemaster has to time the approach of the dingy for when the WS has started his next slurping session to give us a chase to swim along side before the WS gets spooked or needs some oxygen.

4. The fast surface swimmer is Alexi (all the way from Moscow by way of Cuba/Panama) with Teresa and others following after the WS.

5. Teresa just happened to be wearing her dive skin that resembled the markings of a WS.

6. On the second pass the WS turned and swam directly at me. I was so flustered and out of breath that I didn't realize that I had the camcorder completely "zoomed-in". Notice the WS's mouth and spots.

7. A third pass on the WS about a mile away from the first two encounters.

8. A forth pass on the WS.

9. The chase dinghy got swamped twice during our various chases. Not cool - when you're out of breath with no floatation a mile from shore in 100's of feet of water.

To download movie file (right click -> "save as"), then "open" to be able to enlarge the screen size in your movie viewer plug-in.

Or, here is the link to 3 min. set of video clips (below)