Day 03 and we finally get to one of the highlights of this 11 day trip to Cebu: swimming with Whale Sharks, an experience that’s new for all of us, and likely not something we’d do again in the near future! Basically, we’re brought out to about 70 meters from the shore in groups, and the locals would feed whale sharks and we can observe and swim alongside them.
Comments!
The activity seems to run for a considerable stretch of time in the morning at least, with groups departing and returning every 20 to 30 minutes. The actual whale observing and swimming segment is around 20 minutes. That might sound short, but trust me, it’s plenty of time for you to get great videos and photos.
You’d need to come prepared with suitable camera gear: for most of us, that’d be an action camera. I brought along the Olympus Tough TG-5 for stills too, but the quality of pictures I got was heavily dependent on lighting. Some turned out great, others were really hard to post-process i.e. correcting white balance, tint and focusing issues.
There are a lot of rules visitors are required to follow, and yes, they are enforced. You are not permitted to have sunscreen on, and if you do, you need to rinse them off before getting on the boat. Visitors must also not touch the whale sharks and keep a safe distance from them. We saw an ang mo guy deliberately swim towards one whale shark to touch it, and he got shouted at to back off by the super observant wardens. That said, it’s really close quarters, and most of us at one point or another would unintentionally bump into one!
The activity has been considered controversial by some animal conservationists, since the very act of human feeding these wild creatures could be argued as nurturing behavior that isn’t considered natural. That aside, I didn’t get the sense that the activity had been over commercialised. True, it’s a really popular activity and a must-do when in Cebu, but we weren’t nickel and dime for every single thing, and the rules of the activity were also reiterated repeatedly and a lot of dive wardens present to make sure that visitors behaved.
In all, the kids really enjoyed this activity and it was indeed the first easy highlight of our trip and that it didn’t disappoint.
And a video compilation!
We had breakfast after returning, then headed to our next spot: visiting the Sumilon Sand Bar!