Swimming with giants

WHAT?

Jet off to the Seychelles in the middle of the Indian Ocean to swim with the mighty whale shark – the biggest fish in the sea. Prepare to be mightily humbled.

WHEN?
The best time is the Southern Hemisphere summer, when plankton levels in the Indian Ocean are at their annual peaks and whale sharks regularly come close to the surface to fill their faces.

WHY?
Overfishing and global warming are decimating whale shark numbers. If you don’t see them soon, you may never get the chance. Plus, every sighting aids analytical data, so by swimming with them you’re indirectly helping to save them.

HOW?
Qatar Airways and Emirates fly to Mahé from Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth. Expedia (expedia.com.au) has a seven-night stay at Labriz, including flights, starting from $5453 in mid January. A four-hour whale shark trip costs 100 euros ($160).

WE BUMP AND SWAY in the back of the tiny boat as Jimmy, our grizzled Seychellois skipper, navigates the waters with assurance. Occasionally he brings the boat to a sharp halt, stretching his neck beyond the frame of the cabin to inspect a mackerel shoal as we look on with nervous anticipation. Jimmy makes Captain Ahab look like a first-timer on a pedallo. His wrinkled, yet strangely ageless face has pored over the surface of this ocean for so long they almost mirror each other, ripple for tiny ripple.

All of a sudden, our boat heaves into a fast, stiff arc just 40 metres from the edge of the granite coastline. Jimmy’s cracked leather face lets cry, “Whaaale shark! Big one! Get in dere!”

Chaos duly reigns on deck. I catch the flipper of the guy next to me square on the shin, someone else shrieks as a volley of mask-demisting spit clearly misses its target. It’s pandemonium as we haul ourselves overboard into the thick, bottomless blue.

ANCIENT WONDER

Even in a tropical paradise, Mother Nature rarely sticks to the script. Wind back a week from the mayhem on deck and I’ve just landed on Silhouette Island in the Seychelles, an archipelago of thrusting granite knuckles and slivers of white coral beach. The landscape is thick with palm trees and overhead the flashing white bellies of parrots dart from treetop to treetop. I could call it the Garden of Eden . . . except for the torrential rain.

It’s around this time of year that the turquoise waters of the southern Indian Ocean become a teeming banquet for a certain fish, Rhincodon typus, commonly known as the whale shark. I use the Latin, as an antiquated language seems more appropriate – whale sharks gave up on evolution a long time ago. They have been filter-feeding from the same watery buffet for more than 60 million years.

I’m willing to overlook the less than exotic weather because I’m here to fulfil a dream that took root on my first visit to London’s Natural History Museum two decades ago, when I was mesmerised by the enormity of the reconstructed dinosaurs there. The boy from the that museum may not get to walk with dinosaurs, but this week I’ll get about as close as you can to swimming with them.

On the first day, we head to the island’s dive centre. Every morning, the local instructors and guides speak to the Shark Research Institute on Mahé (the main island of the Seychelles), whose fleet of whirring microlights scan the local waters for whale sharks. Today’s outlook is grim – there have been no sightings for days.

Optimism undimmed, we head out on a catamaran and make some dives. We’re rewarded with a sub-aquatic meet-and-greet involving white-tip sharks, huge shoals of groupers and gliding turtles. Quite a guest list, but small fry compared with the whale shark. And so it goes for the next four days. Optimism zero, reality one.

I bumble around the manicured paths of the Labriz resort, resigning myself to the likely prospect that I’m never going to see a whale shark. Consolation comes in the form of the Labriz jungle spa. I notice Czech model Petra Nemcova’s name in the guest book, and suddenly develop a keen interest in volcanic stone massage.

Dinner on the penultimate night resembles the last supper, with all the trimmings. I am miserable. Conversation no longer treads water – it sinks like a stone. But breakfast the following day is a different matter. Earlier, a helicopter pilot confirmed several whale shark sightings along the coast of Mahé. In minutes, I’m hurled on a boat and we’re making a beeline for the main island. For the first time all week, I’ve got a sniff of optimism and my anticipation builds as the coastline looms ever larger.

INTO THE BLUE

After the mayhem above water, it’s eerily quiet below the surface. I’ve got that pang of fear you sometimes get when you go from swimming above a clear sandy bottom to a rocky, dark seabed. This is what humans have been living through for millennia – the primeval fear of the unknown – and it’s my turn to feel it now.

What’s more, the only sound is my hollow breathing amplified through the snorkel – it’s the soundtrack to existential angst. What am I doing here? All of a sudden, I’m just a very small drop in an unquantifiable ocean. Then without notice (what was I expecting, a card?), from a thick mist of tiny stinging plankton, it appears. The huge polka-dot back of an adult male, about 10m of ancient muscle propelled from the deep with a bend of its monolithic frame.

It is mesmerising. He glides languidly, but whether with balletic grace or oafish suspension I can’t really say. The experience is beyond surreal. I feel like a child who has just seen his first ever wild animal. The books, the documentaries, nothing has prepared me for this moment.

Then it gets even better. After a few minutes of chase, another behemoth joins the party. They bump noses comically as they attempt to cross paths, jostling perhaps for the best gulp of microscopic nosh.

It might sound strange, but I can’t help feeling a longing for their acceptance, or perhaps it’s recognition, a yearning to breach the chasm between the human world and the animal world – call it my “Dolittle Syndrome”. I feel childlike swimming next to them, as if I am being made privy to some ancient secret, except I don’t quite know what.

PANIC STATIONS

Then comes a very real reminder that I am in an alien playground. When you submit yourself to the pulse of an ocean and everything in it, you hand over your destiny. If you’re unlucky, you don’t get it back.

Having pursued the whale sharks for some minutes, I’m only a few metres away when one of them u-turns deceptively quickly. It levels its mouth back in my direction and I watch, frozen, as its body swings into line. Evidently, it’s making another feeding pass and I am in the way. I push water as hard as I can, but my body is tombstoning and I’m struggling to move anywhere fast.

And then he’s there, so close I could put my hand in his mouth. The weight of water he displaces as his head sweeps past my chest gives me enough momentum to kick away, but as each metre of raw musculature passes, I just pray the tail doesn’t catch me. Luckily I’m spared, simply because the heave of water the tail sends my way propels me backwards like I’m in an Ang Lee action flick.

My heart races, the gap between my world and theirs blown further apart with that sharp reminder of just how small, powerless and alien I am here. I can feel the surge of adrenaline confusing my movements and I have to tread water for a few moments to get my focus back.

We follow them for five, or maybe 10 or 45 minutes – I couldn’t possibly tell you – until finally they disappear into the dark of deeper water. In the next four hours we come across six more sharks, one of which has a “baby” in tow – it’s the size of a rowing boat.

Now, in hindsight, I can honestly say I would have endured 10,000 rainy days to get the chance to swim with these amazing creatures. Being with them has somehow helped me to redefine my position in the order of things. Getting to know these old men of the sea has been an incredibly humbling experience, I just hope they stick around as long as we do.

Global Gathering

Four other spots to swim with the great fish

Mozambique Channel, Tanzania
December-March
Join the Shark Research Institute in the Mozambique Channel, where you’ll study and film the sharks. See sharkbookings.com/whale-shark.html.

Donsol, Philippines
February-May
Whale sharks congregate in big numbers here, perhaps due to the lack of industrial fishing. You can expect to see up to 20 together at any one time. Visit diveworldwide.com.

Ningaloo reef, Australia
April-July
A four-month window on Australia’s Coral Coast means an opportunity to swim with whale sharks, and the guys at Three Islands Charters are eco-certified. Go to whalesharkdive.com.

Utila, Honduras
January-April
The island of Utila is on the whale sharks’ migratory path. Steve and Jasmine at deepblueutila.com collect data for the international whale shark organisation Ecocean (ecocean.org).