Eventful Wednesday!

Eventful Wednesday! Well today dawned a glorious day with not a cloud in the sky. Which considering just how tropical it is here at Cap Ternay - was a bonus. I was doing the weekly 'plankton pull' so was really glad that the sun was out and the sea flat clam.

The plankton pull is our weekly check to see how much of the stuff is hanging around the area. We drop a really fine net in to preset depths, which are timed, then pull it back in and wash the plankton into a bottle. The places we do this are set and we use a GPS to locate them so we can get a good set of data. The fun part of this is pulling the net back in which is also timed. I pulled it in in 1min12sec, not too far off the girls record of 50sec. It is so knackering and your arms feel like jelly afterwards.
We also went to a couple of beaches that can only reached by boat to check for turtle tracks. We have to snorkel from the boat to the beach - which is quite fun and the guys seem to treat it like a race. The group over on curieuse have been spotting loads of tracks and even found a couple of nests.

We went out for our turtle spotting dives we do every Wednesday afternoon and Geoff was on boat crew (also known as boat bitch LOL). As we motored out into bay we saw the local whale shark spotting boats and their micro light up above us. We decided to go check it out and sure enough as we approached a group from the whale shark boat were in the water swimming with a whale shark. Cue much excitement on our boat.

We grabbed our mask, snorkels and fins in the blink of an eye and were all set to jump in when the shark dived down too deep to see. Our skipper told us to keep our eyes open as we waited to see if more would appear. No sooner had the words left her mouth than she shouted - There's one under the boat! We all scrambled to get into the water to see it. It was a baby one only about 2m long and he only stayed for about 5mins before diving down again.

We all clambered back aboard but no one left their fins and masks off and there was tension in the air - would we be lucky enough to see more? After a short while a catamaran full of tourists just ahead of us all started pointing at the water near their boat. We chugged over to investigate and yep- you guessed it! another whale shark was there. This time it was a bit bigger around 4m.

We all rushed to get into the water and had the best swim ever with the shark. We easily spent about 40mins+ in the water and our presence did not bother the shark one bit. One of the rules about swimming with whale sharks is not to get too close and not to go in front (as this could spook them and make them dive). This shark seemed to want to look at us all, as every time we swam behind it - it turned round to see us. The shark was so majestic and beautiful. I could have swum with it all day. This was the best thing I have ever seen while diving/snorkelling! We are going on the whale shark boat on Saturday - so who knows maybe we will see more!

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