Published on Dec, 2024
My husband and I had such an incredible time on this excursion! The team at Eco Migrations were super friendly and knowledgeable. Thomas was our guide and along with the boat crew they made the trip so memorable. I especially enjoyed hearing about Thomas’ experience as a marine biologist and how passionate he is about marine and wildlife conservation.
What to expect: You’ll meet up with your guide at the Eco Migrations office. I emailed the team beforehand for more information to be sure I could locate it and they were super helpful. Do NOT use Apple Maps to find the office, use Google maps otherwise you’ll likely end up at the old office location a few blocks away. Once you meet up at the office and get fitted for a wetsuit and gear, you’ll walk together to the docks and meet the crew at the boat. You can also bring your own gear if you’d like, which was what my husband and I did since having high quality fins makes keeping up with the whale sharks much easier. After your group is ready to go, you’ll head out on the water and wait for your boat’s turn to enter the whale shark’s protected zone. You’ll be given a thorough briefing on board about rules, regulations, and what to expect. Only a certain amount of boats are allowed in so there’s a bit of a wait, but it is well worth it. After that, your captain and guide will slowly search inside the zone for a whale shark and once they find one, about 4 people at a time (in addition to your guide) will be allowed to jump in and swim with the whale shark and snap some photos if you’re lucky! You’ll only get a few minutes to swim with the whale shark before you have to get back on the boat and let the next group jump in, so it’s important to swim fast and enjoy every second! You’ll likely get about 3-5 jumps spread across multiple whalesharks depending on your group size. It’s important to respect these creatures’ space and there’s a lot regulations that protect them, so while it would be nice to swim with them for longer it’s understandable why you only get a short time with them. My husband and I did two separate tours since just one day wasn’t enough and we are so glad we did! This was truly a memorable experience.
The only downside was maybe that the water visibility wasn’t great when we went. It was less than 8 ft of visibility, so you need to get pretty close to see the whale shark. However, that was primarily due to the windy weather conditions during our visit and even with that we still had a wonderful time! We will absolutely be doing this again!
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