Many years ago whilst living in the Solomon Islands, I took up scuba diving. One thing led to another and I eventually ended up in California at the now defunct PADI college and became a Scuba Instructor. There was the dream of finding a pristine island in the Pacific, open a dive store, dive during the day between lazing around and generally enjoying the good life. As it happened, I ended up in Tokyo Japan which I guess has to be about as far from that dream as one could imagine.
During the dive years, I did pretty much everything, deep dives, decompression, reef, wall, drift, beach, wrecks, cold water (Antarctica) tropical, fresh water etc. I also dived with some of the larger and friskier members of that environment – seals, sharks though it has to be admitted not the crazy type that would take a bite out of you just for curiosity, turtles, and (giant) Manta rays to name a few. I never got to dive with whales but at the back of my mind it was always an item to be ticked.
In March 2013, we decided to take a break from Tokyo winter and go to Cebu in the Philippines. In the last year, some whale sharks with the encouragement of the locals decided to make a small inlet their home. Technically a whale shark is a shark not a whale but when something is in the vicinity of 10 metres long (about 30 feet), one is inclined to let them be called whatever they wish to be called. There were 5 of them, all juveniles as big Mama was off doing whatever big Mama did but 2 dives with about an hour plus in close proximity to these large beasts left me well-satisfied.
http://beautyofcebu.blogspot.jp/2012/02/oslob-cebu-whale-shark-watching.html
And here’s a shameless plug for the dive operator – Thank-you Alfie Diola!
