Diving with giants, Mocambique April 2nd

Ok, I’m often accused by my wife that I’m always after the big stuff when diving… instead of the cute small and colourful fishies. To an extent that is true, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t appreciate a good reef with colours and lots of smaller stuff. This time though we’re at Ponta Do Ouro, and I’m the only diver… and the conditions happened to be good enough to go out to the pinnacles. The deep pinnacles is a deeper dive and a bit further out than the other sites and can only be done when the conditions are very good. You don’t go to the deep pinnacles for sardines. It is one of those sites where you just have to go when the conditions allow it, and I was only SO happy. We saw lots of Zambezi’s, about 7 or 8 hammerheads in the surface and a few other kinds of sharks sliding by, lots of rays… and a huge Cuda/Cuta, like the one I caught fishing the last time - awesome. This Cuta must have been just as long as me though.

But the really cool thing about the dive was that I thought I’d seen a whaleshark for the first time, although at a distance. It was huge, so what else could it be? I was not in doubt - it was like a big fleet of something sliding past with pilot fishes big as Barracuda’s around. No spots on the back though… but the right square front, so of course it was a whale shark. Maybe I just wanted it to be a whale shark so much that I ignored other possibilities completely, coz back in the boat people where only talking about that f**king big tigershark! My god, I thought only the extinct predator Megaladon could reach a size like that. For sure it must have been fully grown! It kinda makes sense also since I didn’t see the stripes on the back. The stripes are distinctive on young species, but tend to fade with age. It almost makes me shiver to know in retrospect what it really was!! Awesome!!