Touch the touching whale shark in Okinawa
Fizkultprivet, Dear tourists and travelers!
Let's talk about fish? And about real hoo-monsters, and not about aquarium spin-tails like "goldfish" or "mini-pecilia" there, and certainly not about small children's misunderstandings like Nemo dwarf fish that catch a heart attack from the first loud sound. Whaleshark! Whale shark in Russian.
Almost nothing is known about the sexual life of whale sharks, although scientists have been trying to observe this process for more than 100 years. But it has already been calculated that the whale shark is ovoviviparous. Whale shark (and here in Latin means: Rhincodon typus) is a cartilaginous fish. It is the largest of the sharks, as well as the largest of modern fish. Its size often exceeds 10 m, there are data on 20-meter specimens, although such individuals are extremely rare.
Unlike most other sharks, this shark feeds only on plankton, straining food from the water with the help of a special filtering apparatus formed by gill arches. It swims very slowly and has an extremely lethargic, apathetic disposition, therefore it does not pose any danger to humans. The whale shark is often completely unresponsive to divers who can touch its body and even ride on its back.
Well, I’m not your Mom’s Siberian, and I’m not some kind of Jack London to write here with encyclopedic knowledge about the animal world, so I’ll go straight to the topic. You will have to read the story. Although for someone and chilling blood. Sometimes the truth is worse than fiction. Diving means with a whale shark in Okinawa.
Diving is Russian for diving. How to dive with a shark (i. e. dive with a shark), and even a 7-meter one ...this needs to be explained.
In order to go to the whale shark, we bought a ticket from a tour operator in Japan (FujiTravel. ru) and flew JAL to Narita (Tokyo), so that after moving to another Tokyo airport called Haneda (Tokyo Haneda Airport), fly to Okinawa, a wonderful prefecture in exotic Japan. We quickly flew to the Okinawa airport in the capital of the island - the city of Naha, and went to The Busena Terrace to spend the night in order to go to meet the shark the next day.
It was in the morning and the road, which in Okinawa is called "Okinawa Route 58" disposed our driver to slowly pilot his "pepilats" at a speed of 40-50 km per hour, which greatly facilitated the observation of the main island, rare bird species, the sea , and most importantly - the American bases in Okinawa.
It is quite interesting, it must be said, to see the US military, with their Hummer H1.2 propeller-driven helicopters and fighter jets.
And in Okinawa, the Americans were preparing their soldiers for deployment to both Afghanistan and Iran ...I was "born in the USSR", and, accordingly, I still remember newspaper articles about the "American military" ....However, these American military bases were real on the way lot. Gathered plenty of information! Every now and then, they came across on both sides of the road. The main topic of the Okinawan economy is what to write next...So let's get back to the shark.
An unusual fish is this whale shark. Over the past 30 years, in Okinawa, not a single person has suffered from the attack of such a "fool"! The locals are not afraid of it at all and put things on stream: they take tourists and Japanese from central Japan to tickle their nerves and inject adrenaline, and they pay them money. Maybe I'm wrong, but diving to the shark will cost 5.000 Russian rubles, or about 16.000 yen in Japanese. Or 160 euros. Well, for someone, almost 180 Baku ...
Shark diving must be booked and paid in advance.
Then, just like us, in the morning a car picks you up from your hotel and takes you to a small port, from where a group of 12-15 people will be taken by boat to the sea, where the whale shark swims.
Of course, for someone it is interesting, but how does this whale shark taste? There are people who want to taste everything to their taste by putting it in their mouths. Don't look for it in Okinawan restaurants. Most likely, the capture of the whale shark in Okinawa is limited, because they grow very slowly and the industrialists of Okinawa even began to breed this shark, like some corals, artificially, and the natural population that remained in the Okinawa sea is most likely very small.
But there is no problem to dive into the depths and stroke this behemoth if you already have scuba diving experience. Personally, I decided to limit myself to simple observation with a mask and snorkel, so as not to frighten the proud, like Britain, mistress of the East China Sea.
And then all of a sudden, she would have seen my evil Russian face and would not have endured such humiliation, and even from a representative of the nation that won the Great Patriotic War, would have glued her flippers with fins. And that would be a loss to the entire tourism business in Okinawa. In general, I felt sorry for the shark, and did not dive to it. For never a diver. For snorkeling is our everything! ! !
Upon arrival at the port, we were met by an Okinawan instructor who constantly laughed after every remark he made to our guide. It looked a little strange (on the video, at the very beginning, just this guy in our boat). He escorted us to a place where we were asked to wear wetsuits and life jackets without fail. By the way, the size must be specified in your pre-order before prepayment. Otherwise, you will pull the Japanese S on your European XXL. And this is not ice at all. So.
Our group, which was already “fully armed”, was seated at a large table and began to be instructed both in snorkeling and diving. Of "our" seven people, 2 girls went diving. Moreover, one of the girls very much “dropped” the instructor-diver, who subsequently dived with them to the shark, joking that she was “so scared” that it would not hurt to have 2 instructors for her alone. The Japanese did not appreciate the joke, and was even offended. Well, we, snorkelers, were told how to properly (! ) insert a snorkel into our mouths, how to “according to concepts” put on a mask, and strictly forbidden to dive with a mask and snorkel. And then they had cases when the Japanese dived like that, but forgot to swim out. Accordingly, R. I. P. The Japanese generally have a bad instinct for self-preservation. It's necessary - forget to emerge! Noooo. We have, as they say in Russia, "God saves the safe. "
So, having set sail from the pier with a group of 15 people (Japanese divers also joined us), we swam to a place in the sea, fenced with buoys. This is where she swims. I climbed on the high side of the boat and jumped into the water, but the graceful “bomb” jump, which I wanted to demonstrate to my Russian companions, was clearly not successful for me, because it was very painful for the “fifth point”, and the enthusiastic exclamations of compatriots something then I did not hear.
Having lowered my face with a mask into the water, seeing this seven-meter fish, I realized that such a huge shark fish is absolutely purple on my angry Russian face. She calmly circled in a huge rope cage, sweeping away everything that came her way with her huge mouth. And on this day, on her way, she came across shrimp, her favorite delicacy, which was thrown out of the bag to her by a Japanese diver-stuff specially thrown into her cage. (This dude at the beginning of the video, still the same. Laughing).
She happily posed and “performed” to all the divers and snorkelers from our group, not forgetting to eat her favorite treat… Yeah…. A bewitching spectacle! Here, for example, in Egypt, sharks began to bite off the arms and legs of tourists from civilized countries swimming peacefully on the beaches. And psychologists bewitched such shark behavior, trying to understand what kind of childhood trauma made these initially good fish so evil. The main direction of their philosophical reflections is existential conclusions from the philosophy of non-existence, psychologists even announced at the corresponding congress. But the broad masses of bathers were not at all satisfied with their answer. Therefore, swimming with sharks in Egypt is deadly! Whether business - Okinawa. Tranquility and tranquility. Solid beauty around and everywhere! Contemplation! So the sharks they have in Okinawa are so harmless at all. Their life is wonderful.
I would even say that whale sharks in Okinawa are cute. Even the biggest ones.
It should be mentioned that the Japanese have safety in the very first place. And in second place is the instruction. So the safety instructions for swimming with a whale shark read: even if you are a world champion in swimming, they will not let you into the water without a wetsuit and a rescue vest. We even laughed, after the briefing, that they say "everything is clear, but I (like) can't swim. "
-That's not the most important thing! - the Japanese answered me. The main thing is to strictly follow our instructions and everything will be fine with you.
Having swum like this for 30 minutes, surrounded by others who were very interested in me, but not at all fearful and small fish, I tried to put my thoughts in order.
So, whale shark: Kawai.
Mouth-teeth. It's not scary: The mouth is big, but there are no teeth.
Fish sizes. Impressive!
Here is such a story. The richer, the more happy. But it's true!
I express my gratitude to the authorized agency in Perm of the Moscow tour operator Fuji Travel and personally to the beautiful girl Anastasia! !
