Swimming With Whale Sharks in Dhigurah

Six of us were on the dhoni — me, two German divers, a French couple celebrating their tenth anniversary, and Yamin, our spotter. We'd left Dhigurah harbour at 7am. The captain killed the engine inside the South Ari Marine Protected Area, and Yamin climbed onto the roof with binoculars.

This is how the trips work. The boat motors slowly along the channel between Dhigurah and Maamigili, where the seafloor drops to about 30 metres and juvenile whale sharks come up from deeper water to feed and warm themselves in the sun-blasted top layer. The spotter scans for the dark grey shadow that gives them away from above. When he calls "shark!", the captain accelerates, you put on your fins and mask before he stops, and you slide off the back into 28°C water with strict instructions: stay on the surface, no flash photography, no touching, no swimming directly in front of the animal.

We dropped in at 9.15am. I went over the side with the German divers, kicked away from the boat, and looked down. Nothing. Twenty seconds of pale-blue empty water. Then a shape emerged from the haze — slow, patient, twice the length of the dhoni — and a 9-metre whale shark glided directly under us, eight metres down. The pattern of white spots on its grey-blue back is unique to each animal; researchers ID them like fingerprints. This one was missing the tip of its dorsal fin, probably a propeller scar from earlier in life.

We swam alongside for roughly two minutes before it picked up speed and dropped into the deep. You can't keep up. Whale sharks cruise around 5 km/h and you, snorkelling hard, manage maybe 2.5 km/h. The right way to do it is to see them, get a few seconds, and let them go.

The trip cost $35 each, ran for three hours, and we got two more sightings — both shorter, both magic. The South Ari channel is one of the only places on Earth where whale-shark sightings are essentially year-round; researchers have logged the same juveniles returning month after month for years.

A few notes if you go. Book through your guesthouse — the licensed operators run small boats, follow the protected-area code, and brief you in English. Don't book the cheapest option you find on a third-party site; the unlicensed boats sometimes overload, anchor on coral, or get too close. Bring reef-safe sunscreen (apply 30 minutes before, give it time to bind to your skin so it doesn't leach into the water). Wear a rash guard rather than relying on cream alone. And bring antihistamines — about half the boats in the channel have a few sea-stinger jellyfish that drift through with the current, and a brush is more annoying than dangerous.

Best window: 8–10am, when the channel water is calm and visibility is at its best. Don't bother with the late-afternoon trips — animals are deeper and the spot lighter.

I'd do it again tomorrow. The country is full of overrated things; this isn't one of them.