I'm not normally a physical adventure-type of person. I'm usually more interested in the art scene of a place than its thrills. But when my sisters voted to go to Donsol to swim with the whale sharks for our local trip this year, I thought it wouldn't be so bad. I had been so uninspired for the past few months that I thought a change in scenery, as well as a deviation from my usual activities, would do me good.
Growing up to a length of forty feet, the whale shark is easily the largest fish in the sea. It is a shark, not a whale, which means it's a fish and doesn't need to surface for air. But plankton being its pimary diet, it needs to go close to the surface where the said organism thrives by taking in sunlight. This also means that this colossal shark is harmless to humans. Donsol, a small town in Sorsogon in the Bicol region, is the whale shark capital of the Philippines. From November to May, the whale shark comes to the area to breed and feed. And as part of an awareness campaign for this creature, the World Wildlife Foundation and the Department of Tourism came up with an Ecotourism program that allowed visitors to swim and see the sharks up close.
I was excited to get away from Manila and its heat for a while. Then again, I'm always excited about going to places I've never been to yet. But I must admit, I was not as excited as my travelling companions to swim with the biggest fish on Earth. It was not that the prospect of swimming with an animal in the shark family scared me. It was more like I didn't quite see what all the fuss was about. If one wanted to see a whale shark, one need only go online and search. There are a lot of pictures out there of the butanding, as it is known locally.
Anyway, I couldn't really say that out loud and burst everyone's bubble, could I? Not when my sisters were so looking forward to seeing the whale sharks. And not when my cousin kept jumping off her seat and shouting, “Oh my God! Oh my God!” everytime our spotter thought he saw something. But I'm getting ahead of my story. Allow me to start from the beginning.
Our day started at six in the morning of April 18, 2009. There were four of us: me; two of my sisters, Marie and Maita; and my cousin, Lala. Our Butanding Interaction Officer, or BIO, picked us up on the shores of our resort. There were four of them manning the boat: our BIO, who would be joining us in the water; a spotter, whose job was to spot the whale sharks from afar; and two men who manned our boat.
It had rained the night before. And BIOman said it would be difficult for our spotter to find whale sharks after a rain because they tended to swim deeper down whenever it rained. But we would try anyway. We had three hours to find them. The boat was ours for that duration. We set off.
I still couldn't feel the excitement. It's not that I disliked the idea. I liked seeing wildlife, too. But I just couldn't feel anything.
And I wanted to feel something. I was uninspired and I needed to feel something.
It was still a bit foggy when we headed to the deep. Donsol was a beautiful place. Not manicured-beach-beautiful. And there's not much of what we, from busier cities, would consider entertainment. But it had its own wilder, more untouched, kind of beauty. From our boat, the waters looked like a sea of shiny mercury. Mount Mayon was barely visible on the horizon. And when I looked up at the sky, the cloud formation looked like a white version of the aurora borealis. Beautiful. Out at sea we saw several flying fishes jump up and skim over the surface like a stone skipping over the water. There were dolphins, too. Once, they even swam quite close to our boat. Not like Talicud in Davao City, though, where dolphins sometimes actually swam just beside your boat. But they were still close. It was good to see. It was a calm and pleasant feeling.
But still not exciting.
Well, at least I felt something. Calm and pleasant was good. Bored and frustrated, though, was not. That was what came next.
For the next few hours, we scoured the sea for the elusive butanding. On normal days when the sea is clearer, each boat would have its own area, and a group could see up to eight sharks in a morning. But it was not clear that day. It had rained at around two that morning, which raised the river's level and spilled some of the river's dirty water into the sea. Because of the scarcity of sightings, boats moved out of their respective areas and converged in places where other boats saw the beast. And too many people scared the creature into withdrawing deeper down and out of sight. Once, we arrived just as the shark was descending. I didn't see anything. Only Marie got a glimpse of the creature, and all she saw were faint white dots.
It was probably aleady close to eleven in the morning, although one couldn't really tell with the way time moved so slowly in Donsol. BIOman was getting frustrated with how the other boats always beat us to the sharks. My companions and I were already slumped with our smiles gone from our faces. I had already fallen asleep a few times. BIOman probably noticed how disheartened we looked, and told us we wouldn't be heading back until we found one. He told the driver of our boat to move towards a part of the sea where the other boats were not spotting for sharks. A little while later, BIOman suddenly jumped up and talked Bicolano to the spotter. There was a sort of urgency in his tone. He turned to us and told us to gear up and get ready. Quickly, we put on our goggles, snorkels hanging on the side of our eyewear. We had spotted something.
BIOman quickly pulled on his flippers and instructed us to sit at the edge of the boat. But looking behind us, there was another boat in pursuit. Our movements had been noticed. BIOman shouted to our driver to go faster. Then, turning to us, he said, “When I say jump, jump!” I didn't know how to swim. I could doggy-paddle in the shallow part of the swimming pool, but I didn't think I could swim in the deep open ocean! I always thought this whole butanding experience would be a lot slower, calmer. You know, like the pictures you would see from the Tourism posters. And I thought I could let my sisters jump in the water first, then I could slip down slowly and hold on to them. But with everyone's energy level running this high, and with another boat just behind us intending to take our butanding, I wasn't going to protest. BIOman shouted for us to jump. “Bahala na!” I thought. “Let what's coming come. I'll deal with my swimming problem when I'm actually swimming.” Anyway, I was wearing a lifevest. It was torn in places and the styrofoam might just burst out of the vest once one impacted with the water, but, hey what were the chances all four of the styros were going to pop out all out once anyway. Throwing caution to the wind, I threw myself off the boat.
I fell into the water with a splash. Completely submerged, I couldn't see anything but blue. My body rotated (not through any deliberate effort of my own) to an awkward angle and, to my relief, surfaced sputtering plankton-rich sea water. Take my word for it, it doesn't taste good. Fumbling around to see where everyone else was, I felt BIOman grab my arm and adjust my goggles. He told us to put our snorkel's mouthpiece into our mouths already. I was still dazed when BIOman gave us new instructions: “When I say look down, look down.” I just nodded. “Alright,” he said. “Look down!” I did what I was told. If this was a movie, the next scene's sound effect would have been one low reverberating drum beat.
The posters showed whale sharks in clear blue waters with rays of sunlight peeking through from the surface above. About three meters away, divers swam side by side with the gentle giants. It looked like a scene from an inspirational movie. But like fastfood, the actual thing is always different from the poster. Unlike fastfood, though, the actual thing did not disappoint. I wanted to feel something intense? Well, I got it. Not exactly what I was expecting but then I wasn't really very specific. Instead of Free Willy, the feeling was more like Jaws. When I looked down, instead of seeing a spotted blue creature swimming past my line of sight, what I saw coming out of the dark murky waters was a grinning grey giant... coming straight towards me.
It headed downward. When it reached my position, it would be just a few inches below my feet if I extended them. I just floated there, too stunned to do anything as the spotted shark slowly swam on beneath me. BIOman grabbed my arm and we pursued the butanding until it finally descended out of sight. We surfaced. And my sisters, my cousin, and I laughed and exchanged stories about how surprised, shocked, and awed we were when we first saw the whale shark. It had been a medium-sized whale shark, measuring about twenty-three feet. The width of the butanding's body was double my width or more. And so was its mouth. Yes, width-wise, it seemed very much capable of swallowing me whole. But its mouth didn't open very wide. Like I said, it only ate plankton. So, I was quite safe. Come to think of it, the butanding actually looked like a twenty-three-foot spotted janitor fish.
Climbing back into the boat, we set off to find another one, giving me a bit of time to reflect on the experience. I had thought swimming with the whale sharks was going to be a shared kind of experience. While we were physically together, once you see the shark, you tend to forget everybody else. No, the experience was more personal. In the presence of the giant, I suddenly felt small. I, Miss I'm-so-great-I-can-do-whatever-I-set-out-to-do, suddenly felt vulnerable and powerless in the face of an endangered fish that wasn't even going to hurt me. Its size, its beautiful spots, its serene movement towards the deep, they all evoked so much awe. You know the feeling when you see something so beautiful it makes you want to cry? I felt that then. Mixed with the daunting feeling you get being before a living creature so much bigger than you.
Just for the record, no, I didn't cry.
Not long after, we spotted our second whale shark. From afar, we saw its dorsal fin sticking out of the surface of the water. Same drill. We sat at the edge of the boat and waited for BIOman's signal. Only this time, we had more competition. From two different directions before us were boats speeding towards the fin. BIOman screamed at the driver to go faster. We managed to get to the butanding first. But the other two boats weren't stopping. They intended to swim with this one, too! “Jump!” BIOman ordered. This time, I managed to land without the flailing in my movements. “Look down! Look down!” He shouted. I did. Like the last encounter, I was face to face with it. Only this time, it was a lot nearer.
I curled up my legs, not wanting to hit the creature. Quickly, I struggled to move to the side so I wouldn't collide with its dorsal fin. It was about the same size as the first one we saw. But this close, the spots were more majestic. I allowed BIOman to drag me as we pursued the creature. And I just stared, awed at the beautiful white spots on the equally beautiful giant beneath me. Suddenly, I needed air. I realized I had forgotten to put on my snorkel. Going up to the surface, annoyed at having to cut my already brief encounter with the butanding, I breathed in and wore my snorkel. Going back down, I saw that it had gotten lower already. This time, I saw the middle part of its body. The pattern of the spots on its body changed after the gills. The head spots were more random. The body spots were more arranged. The pattern was alternating row of dots and lines. Absolutely breathtaking. I forgot to breathe. Then I realized I already had my snorkel on. And I had to make a conscious effort to breathe in through the snorkel. But somehow, I was too distracted that I couldn't get my breathing in the right rhythm, and a bit of water came in through my snorkel, my breathing ended up ragged. But I wasn't willing to miss any more of the butanding, I did my best to breathe slowly through the snorkel. When it finally dived, I surfaced coughing and sputtering and laughing. Not because anything particular was funny. But because I simply felt good seeing the giant, and the only thing I could do was to laugh.
All in all, the trip to Donsol to see the whale sharks was worth it. So, was I inspired? Hey, I wrote this entry, didn't I? If not for anything, it gave me a story to tell. Hope you enjoy it. Save the whale sharks!
