Posts Tagged: Whaleshark

The Philippines N°2

As mentioned in the previous post, I went to the philippines again!
This time, I took some friends who also dive and flew to manila. From there, we went to coron, oslob and moalboal to spend a few days island hopping and diving – but see for yourself!


I (finally) bought a GoPro Hero 5 black and took this, instead of the chinese actioncam (e.g. during my Corfu-Trip) or the canon Powershot D20 (Komodo) – but honestly, I’m really disappointed with the photo-quality. Some of the distortion might be due to less clear water or higher currents but for taking pictures, the GoPro Hero 5 is definetly not good enough – above and below the surface. (And way less good than Ads or influencers make you believe; I’m not even sure it would win in a standoff to a 50€ china actioncam. This counts for PHOTOS – the GoPro Series-Camneras were designed for videos anyway.)

A gamble for a whaleshark – Diving Koh Tao – again.

Having booked the komodo-flights just hours after coming back from the liveaboard, I was scrolling down my facebook-feed and noticed Phoenix Divers Koh Tao – whom I had visited the year before – had been posting whaleshark pictures for days in a row. Erik, my dive-buddy just said ‘can’t we go there?’ – And since we had 4 days before our flight to komodo, we started googling how to get to Koh Tao asap. Flights were expensive but we found a bus-ferry route and messaged the diveshop if they had beds in the dorm and spots on the boat. They did =). Delayed by a day due to the late kings funeral ceremony (may he rest in peace) and after leaving our krabi-hotel 3 days early, we were on our way to Koh Tao – anticipating to see those magnificent giant spotted whalesharks. A few hours of cab, bus and ferry rides we arrived in koh Tao in the evening and set up our gear. The next day we had 3 great dives – without whalesharks 🙁 . And the evening was overshadowed by backpackers and tourists deserting bars due an alcohol ban.
On the 2nd and last day of our ridiculously short trip over to Koh Tao we were on the boat again – enjoying coffee, the salty air and stunning view while making new friends among the other divers. Then we saw it: The captain lifted his hand sideways in front of his forehead – and people started getting enthusiastic while the diveguides tried to keep us calm since there’s absolutely no guarante these animals stick around. Luckily it did =)). When we reached chumpon pinnacle, we got ready and as soon as someone spotted the whaleshark jumped in.

It stayed with us for most of 2 dives, circelling in and out of sight and coming really close.