Whale Sharks and Manatees! Location:Gladden Split - Belize Day 4 by Wayne & Karen Brown

We joined Avadon Divers and eight other scuba diving adventurers to search for whale sharks at Gladden Spit, on the southern end of the Belize Barrier Reef.

After a fast, one-hour boat ride on Avadon Diver's brand new dive boat we arrived at Gladden Spit. When we arrived at Gladden Spit we meet a ranger who controls the diving with whale sharks at Gladden Spit.

To protect whale sharks and to make sure that they will not be disturbed and leave and not come back, the Belize government has made the area around Gladden Spit a protect marine reserve. The numbers of boats and people who can come here to see the whale sharks are limited and the ranger here controls this.

After getting the OK from the ranger we continue to the deep water along the outside edge of the barrier reef. We will be diving deep here. This is called "blue water diving", because when we dive here we can't usually see the bottom, we can only see blue water since it bottom is so deep. Our Belizean divemaster, Sean, tells us our dive will be to around 80 feet down, because that is the area where the whale sharks usually feed.

The whale sharks come here to eat the eggs of fish, called snappers. These fish come here is spawn each year in June during the full moon. The whale sharks come here at the same time to gulp down all the fish eggs they can.

After putting on all of our Aqua Lung scuba diving equipment we jump into the water and start our descent to 80 feet. When we get to 80 feet we can see the bottom directly below us about another 50 feet below us. The underwater visibliity is an excellent 100'+! The water is a warm 81ºF. We swim away from the barrier reef and now we can't see the bottom. Everything is blue.

After about 20 minutes we wonder if we came here on a bad day. No whale sharks. Finally divemaster Sean signals to us! He sees a whale shark! We spot it swimming along the reef at about our level! The whale shark is about 30 feet long. It's gigantic! This shark is twice as big as the one we dove with in South Australia! This shark is so huge and slow moving, that it seems fake. It seems like one of the fake dinosaurs that you would see in Animal Kingdom at Disney World. The closest we get to the sharks is about 40 feet away, but with a shark this big it doesn't seem that far away at all.

On our second dive we found two, young, smaller whale sharks. These whale sharks were over 25 feet long, which is still pretty big. These whale sharks swam back and forth, so we got to see them a few times. One of the whale sharks swam right in between a group of divers and come so close to them its tail almost whacked one of the divers as it passed by!

After our incredible whale shark experiences we stopped inside the reef for a lunch break. Philip shouted out that he had spotted some large animals in the water heading right toward our boat! We grabbed our masks, fins, and snorkels and jumped into the water to see what they were! Manatees! This is great! Even through we couldn't join Bob Bonde to see the manatees with him the manatees came to us. (Maye they heard we are friends of Bob!) These manatees were about 8-10 feet long. There were four of them. One of the manatees was a little larger than the other three. The three were following the larger manatee. It looked like a female manatee being followed by three males. Unlike the manatees we have worked with in Florida (on our expedition, The Crystal River Florida Manatee Expedition) these manatees did not come over to us to have their bellies scratched. The three males were all competing for the female’s attention and not interested in us at all!

After the manatees swam away we returned to the boat. Philip told us that he had never seen manatees out on the reef before! What a way to end a day of diving with whale sharks! A swim with manatees, too!

Best fishes,.
Wayne & Karen Brown

Position: 16º 39' N / 87º 58' W
Air Temp: 87ºF
Weather: light breeze, sunny with scattered clouds and calm seas.
Water Temp: 84ºF

Jamaican sister and brother, Ann-Marie and Philip O'Neal, are the owners of Avadon Divers. We will be diving with them during our expedition.

Between us is Philip on his dive boat on our way to dive with whale sharks!

We stopped at this shallow reef while we had lunch.

Manatees! It is a female and three young males are following her.

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