A 4:30am start for an early trip to Talisayan to see the whale sharks, an animal K has been wanting to see for a long time, after missing out in Tofo, Mozambique when they all dived to the bottom just as she was about to jump in. K had arranged for our island stay to be at the time of the new moon, the best time to see the whale sharks that hang around the floating fishing pontoons.
We left at around 5:30am for a very rough trip in a small two engine boat, driven by what appeared to be a 14 year old. We were relieved that the bumping around was over when we arrived at the whale shark pontoon around 7am. Two other boats were there and six other tourists were already in the water snorkeling incredibly close to the lone whale shark.
The fishermen were throwing buckets of dead sardines into the shark's cavernous mouth, it was almost like a dog begging for scraps at the table. The fish smell was overpowering and visibility in the water was only a couple of metres because of the amount of dead fish bits floating around.
K dived while M snorkeled, at times we both had to scramble to get out of the way of the whale shark, and at one point he flicked one of K's legs as it swam past. Although it was good to finally see a whale shark, it felt too crowded and quite unethical, it wasn't quite what we'd expected.
After 40 minutes or so we jumped back into the boat for the two hour return journey. Not quite as rough but still quite uncomfortable, and it had just started raining as we arrived back at the island, just making it inside before a massive storm with thunder and lightning, the wind and rain shaking our over water bungalow.
After a couple of hours the storm had passed so we could head out again for a second dive at Snapper Point, only 10 minutes away. K did a drift dive with the dive master, while M snorkeled around the boat. The divemaster had limited English and was generally uncommunicative, it was difficult to know what was happening without any briefing or explanation. The rain storm meant that visibility was poor but K still managed to see a large turtle and different sized moray eels. What was surprising was the dive master disturbing and handling a number of small sea creatures, since a key rule of diving is that divers shouldn't touch or disturb any sea creature.
We had another lovely dinner on the deck provided by our accommodation at Derawan Dive Lodge. It's shoulder season and we are the only ones staying here, and elsewhere around the island most of the tourists we've see have been Indonesian.
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