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.
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