IT'S MORE FUN IN THE PHILIPPINES
It's been a very, very long time since I've put up a post on my blog - over a year and a half, now. Family, work, and life in general keep all of us busy, and it becomes easy to lose any vestige of discipline in trying to keep a semi-regular blog. But I hope to be able to gradually get back into the swing of things again, and ultimately to regain some of the old blogging friends who I am sure have moved on to reading more regularly updated blogs, as well as to post some content of interest to newcomers to my blog.
This last week, we took a trip to Oslob to drive southwestward down the eastern coast of Cebu Island to watch and swim with the whale sharks, gentle giants of the deep that are a spectacular sight to behold. The local name for them is 'butanding'. Our destination was Oslob, on the eastern side of the southernmost tip of Cebu Island, and the barangay (village) where the whale watching tours were located is called Tan-awan. You can't miss the whale watching tour signs there right on the main road; they are very obvious.
Whale sharks are a slow-moving filter-feeding shark (with a mouth like baleen whales) and the largest known species of fish in existence. They are, however, not whales, which are mammals. The largest confirmed one known was about 41 feet (12.5 meters) long and weighed about 47,000 pounds. They have a mouth that can be up to about 5 feet (1.5 m) wide, containing 300-350 rows of tiny tech and 10 filter pads that it they use to filter feed. Their dark grey, almost black skin (with a lighter colored belly) is marked with pale whitish-yellow spots and stripes, which are unique to each individual.
The companies who run the whale shark tours hire some of Oslob's fishermen to feed the whale sharks every day by dumping "chum" buckets of krill from outrigger canoe bangka boats (these are hand-paddled and not boats with an engine and propeller). This has sparked some controversy regarding whether or not this is in the best interests of the whale sharks and their health, but on the flip side of things, it seems that they are generally well-protected and there are rules and policies in place to protect both the whale sharks and visitors by prohibiting touching the whale sharks or swimming too close to them, prohibiting wearing sunblock lotion near them (this is toxic to them), etc. I think that in some ways we have to see the whole "big picture", too -- public awareness is being raised about these whale sharks by allowing for these closely monitored encounters, and in fact more money is being funneled to protect and humanely study these creatures per the sign in the photo above.
If your point of origin for the trip to Oslob is Cebu City (the largest city in the region), it is advisable to leave very early in the morning (around 5:00 AM, or 5:30 AM at the very latest) so that you can arrive at Oslob at a good time for the arrival of the whale sharks, who come in regularly in the mid-morning (around 8:30-9:00 AM), as they are being fed at that time. It's more or less a 3 or 3 and a half hour trip, but during the days close to Christmas, traffic in Cebu City in particular is crazy (but not in the wee hours of the morning). The tour is also best done on a weekday as opposed to a weekend, so you don't have to compete with as many tourists.
After arriving at their ticket counter (I think the tickets were something like P 500 per person) and reading various educational/advisory signs about the rules for the sharks' and visitors' safety, they will lend you snorkeling goggles, snorkel, and life jacket (at no extra cost).
You'll then load up in an outrigger canoe bangka boat to take the short trip to just perhaps a few hundred meters off the beach. There, you will already be able to see the whale sharks being fed, and swim among them, and you are given 30 minutes' time to be out there with the whale sharks.
My first encounter hihi
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