Looking for Whale Sharks in Belize

I’ve just returned from a week-long trip to Placencia Belize, so just thought I’d write a bit about it for everyone. 

I was with a group of 12 divers organized through Olympia Underwater Sports to go to look for Whale Sharks off of Gladden Spit.   For the past 10 years or so divers have been able to routinely encounter whale sharks during the full moons of Spring…. March, April, May and June.  The Whale Sharks come to Gladden Spit to feed on the gametes released by thousands of spawning snapper.  There’s a cool video on this annual event here  http://vimeo.com/5768699

So, during the full moon of the last week of April we flew down to Belize and then on to Placencia, the town located closest to the spawning site. 

Only problem was, there were no whale sharks to be found.  We’d arranged for three days of whale shark diving.  We shorted that to 1 and a half days, but it was pretty much just a swim in open blue water with nothing to see except for an occasional

jelly drifting by.

The dive master gave us a dive plan of finding the schools of snapper, then getting into a tight circle with our arms linked.  The idea was that if we got close together, the sharks would think we were a school of breeding snapper and our bubbles would look like a mass of eggs floating up in the water.  In theory, the sharks head for the bubbles overhead and give the divers a close-up view as the whale shark heads right for us and over the top of us. 

In the end we did three ‘whale shark dives’ and saw the schooling snapper on one of the three, but no whale sharks.   I was needless to say a bit frustrated.  No dive group had ever seen a whale shark the entire season.  Word around town was that last year no whale sharks were seen by anyone until the June full moon. 

Our dive-master James said that he’d never failed to see a whale shark during the April Full Moon cycle and was quite visibly disappointed when we cancelled three of our whale shark trips to reef dives.   

James did however say that he’s observed changes in the snapper over his ten years of leading dives at this location.  When he first started, the snapper were close to the surface and you just swam out among them.  Now, the Snapper are spawning at 80 feet, due most likely to the regular presence of divers.  There are severe restrictions over how many boats (6) can be in the spawning area and how many divers each boat can have (12).    Still, that may be too many, someday I suspect that diving will not be allowed at this location in the near future.  This is the last place in the world where one is allowed to dive rather than snorkel in the presence of the Whale Sharks.  I wonder if the fish are simply going even deeper and this is changing the whale shark feeding patterns. 

Still, even without the Whale Sharks we had a good time.  The dive operation ‘Splash’ is first rate, with some of the best dive-masters I’ve had.  The only negative is the fact that the dive sites are all located at least 90 minutes from Placencia by boat.  There’s other places in Belize where dozens of great sites can be visited with a 5 minute boat ride and you do your surface interval on shore.    

The Blue Hole is a popular dive site, but having done it every year for the past three years I wasn’t excited about the 3 ½ hour boat ride each way from Placencia to do it again.  That’s a long way to go to spend 5 minutes at 130 feet in cold dark water looking at the stalactites. 



Our group wanted to go however, so I went along because I do love the Half Moon Caye dive sites (photo below), some of the best diving in the world, period. 

But the reefs around Gladden Spit and Glover’s Atoll are also great too.  I especially liked the Silk Caye area.  A couple of days we visited a shallow area in the Silk Cayes that had a resident group of Loggerhead turtles.  We had fun snorkeling with these big fellows, being wary of the fact that they can bite rather hard.  And once at Gladden Spit we had just gotten back in the boat after our first unsuccessful Whale Shark hunt when a large pod of dolphins approached the boat.  The captain yelled ‘everyone get your mask and snorkel and jump in!’.  We were rewarded with an awesome encounter with these beautiful animals, a group of four came up to me, looked me in the eye with intense curiosity.  ‘what kind of creature are you?’  Of course in my haste to get in the water I’d left my camera on board!  (yes, ‘no photo, no proof’)

In short, if you go to find Whale Sharks you must go knowing that you’ll likely not find them.  The annual gathering of these animals is changing due to unknown reasons.  Be flexible in your dive plans and you’ll have a great time.   We did.