Swimming with Whale Sharks

I am off to France for a holiday on Monday, and I am really excited.  It will be the first beach holiday which I have had a for a long time and I can not wait; the sun on my face, feeling warm, reading books and swimming in the sea.  I was contemplating taking my snorkel when I realised that the last dozen times I have been in the sea I have been with the most extraordinary creatures and that the Mediterranean may not have the same sort of creatures!

Mozambique is a great place to snorkel and an even better place to SCUBA dive. The coral reef is spectacular there and you can see clown fish swimming in amongst colourful corals, sea fans at great depths and even manta rays at 'cleaning stations'. Magical.  I have been on a dive when I could have sworn that I had seen a great white, even the instructor had rather larger eyes than usual, I have seen manta rays with wing spans of over 4m and I have seen squadrons of  devil rays, all swimming over us like planes in WWII. The fish are curious and not scared of divers allowing me to have incredible sightings of all kinds of fish ranging from powder blue surgeon fish to red fang trigger fish and clown fish to scorpion fish.  However, the best fish sighting was a whale shark.

And yes whale sharks are fish, despite their size, in fact the largest confirmed individual was 12.65 metres long and the heaviest weighed more than 36 tonnes although unconfirmed claims report considerably larger whale sharks. Whale sharks have spots all over them and is known as "pez dama" or "domino" in Mexico for its distinctive patterns of spots. It is a deity in Vietnam and is called "Ca Ong", which literally translates as "Sir Fish". But the best name is from Kenya, Africa, where it is called "papa shillingi", coming from the myth that God threw shillings upon the shark which are now its spots and in Madagascar the name is "marokintana" meaning "many stars".

My first sighting of a whale shark was off the coast of Mozambique when I was going to Manta Reef to do my last deep dive for my Deep Diver Speciality Course. It was a long boat journey out, well 40 mins, and we were told that there were often chances of seeing dolphins as well as whale sharks along the way.  I had been keeping my eyes peeled for a whale shark for ages and had yet to see one.

My luck was in that day in 2003, as a whale shark suddenly loomed up from the deep below to surface very near our boat.  We had been briefed that if one did surface we could get in the water with it and swim close to it, but not to touch it.  Touching the skin could damage it as we could pass on chemicals that might affect the shark.

I didn't need second telling, as soon as the boat cut its engine I elbowed my way past everyone else to get into the water first, I never thought I had it in me!  It was a wonderful moment as I snorkeled up to this giant fish and watched it as it swam leisurely past me.  It was enormous. Despite its size, whale sharks do not pose significant danger to humans and although massive, whale sharks are docile fish and snorkelers can swim without risk, apart from unintentional blows from the shark’s large tail fin! So I kept well away from its tail and spent a glorious 10 mins with this whale shark before it dived into the deep blue sea.

Memories of a life time.

Meerkat Magic

I was recently working in Swinley Forest and had the opportunity to hold a meerkat..... again. I know that it seems a bit of an odd place to find a meerkat, near Bracknell, but I was working on a team event called 'I am a Team Player, Get Me Out of Here', loosely based on the very similarly named popular TV show. We were providing a scaled down version of the hit series and there was a guy who pitched up with £5,000 worth of creepy crawlies and other exotic animals in the back of his van for 'animal encounters'. This included a Chilean rose tarantula (which I gingerly held - I have a bit of a phobia about large hairy spiders so it was a big thing for me), a vat of crickets, a number of snakes including an impressive albino python and two adorable meerkats.

The last time I held a meerkat was in the back of beyond in South Africa, a rescue meerkat from the bush, and as I cradled the one in Swinley Forest whilst it made a chirrup purring noise, it brought back memories of my wonderful meerkat experience.

I had been working with a game capture unit and we were based at a farmstead where we were trying to catch inyala. There was obviously a caring side to the owners as there were rescue animals of all shapes and sizes living in the house, ranging from wild cats to meerkats. All things fluffy and cuddly and I fell in love with the place.

It may not seem much, but I was asked to look after the new addition, a meerkat, a small bundle of fluff that needed constant supervision and needed to be kept warm.  I was offered this rather important roll and this small male pup instantly became attached to me, and me to it. Meerkats go around in groups called a 'mob', 'gang' or a 'clan' and I like to think I became part of his 'gang', with him tucked into my fleece to keep off the chill of the cold African mornings.

Meerkats are intriguing animals, they can dig as much dirt as their own body weight in a couple of seconds, they are immune to the poison of snakes and scorpions and they are such good hunters that some have been tamed to become rodent catchers. However, they are the favourite food for eagles and hawks and with a sharp shrill from one of the meerkat sentries the whole clan will disappear into their burrow network - young meerkats are so afraid of predatory birds that even airplanes will send them diving for cover!

And that was where I came in.  I protected this bundle of joy from 'airplanes', kept him warm from the harsh African weather and spoke to him as a team member.  It was a joy that only lasted for two days but provided memories for a life time.

You never forget when a wild animal accepts you into their pack, despite its size.

Tick Blitz

Getting a tick is not high on any ones list. 

There are over 850 tick species in the world, of which 100 are capable of carrying a disease such as Lymes disease or Tick Bite Fever. Ticks are not born with a disease, they pick it up from their hosts.  They are quite clever really, in their adult form ticks will climb up vegetation and use their forelegs to feel/grab for a host, using carbon dioxide, scent, body heat and other stimuli to find the host. Ticks are usually found from ground level to three feet above the ground. 

These past few days I have been walking in the North Wessex Downs assessing Silver Duke of Edinburgh groups and I didn't really appreciate how rife the ticks were in the area.  I spent a good while removing ticks with carefully selected tweezers.  I found these ticks much harder to remove than the ones in Africa, these ones were much smaller and once they had really buried their heads into the girls flesh they proved to be difficult to remove. Ticks have not got good biting mouth parts so have to bury their mouth and head into their host in order to get to the blood vessels.  Charming creatures.

African ticks also come in a variety of shapes and sizes, but seem to be easier to remove. I remember advising a group of girls that walking through the bush in a strappy top was not a good idea, the bush was over head height and they were off the beaten track walking transects across a game reserve.  But they wanted a tan and it was too hot.....  They only needed to to be advised once; that night I spent many an hour meticulously picking ticks off from around a number of bra strap lines!  Once you get the hang of the method - twist and pull, it can be quite therapeutic.

Ticks can be avoided with insect repellent but the best thing to do is to wear long trousers and a long sleeved shirt - also helps with preventing sunburn when in Africa, and the UK (at the moment)!