Species: Whale, Pelagic Thresher, White-tip Reef, Grey Reef shark.
Location: Philippines. 2010
Looking back at my diary I kept whilst in the Philippines – not a day went by when I wasn’t describing my underwater encounters as “mind-blowing, phenomenal, stupidly amazing, out of this world… etc.…” The truth is no words can describe the kick I was getting from swimming alongside the biggest fish in the Ocean – the Whale shark, I literally pinched myself several times just to make sure the encounters were real and then getting to dive with Pelagic Thresher sharks, on (usually) a daily basis as well as Reef sharks and other elasmobranchs including Pygmy Devil rays and Manta rays which became regular visitors to the areas I was diving.
Whenever I thought it couldn’t get any better, I would get 2 threshers and a manta on the same dive or an encounter for 10 minutes or more with a circling thresher making eye contact on each pass. I was living as close to an aquatic existence as I could manage, even descending into yet more dives every time I fell asleep on land!