Liveaboard MS Aurora – Symbiosis with Whale Sharks Exploratory Tour to Cenderawasih Bay 5th to 13th December 2011, West Papua

Indonesia – This fascinating country with around 18,000 islands, covering an enormous area dotted with endless reefs, is enjoying increased popularity among scuba divers. It is the land I have chosen to be my home, based on our liveaboard AURORA.On 6th December 2011 we set sails for our first exploratory tour with our Phinisi style MS Aurora from Manokwari to Cenderawasih Bay in West Papua, home of the whale sharks.

The first day of diving was dedicated to three wrecks in the bay of Manokwari and we explored some wrecked patrol boats as well as the Shinwa Maru, an imposing Japanese transport ship 120 m long. We were all pleasantly surprised with the good condition of the ships – they hosted beautiful aquatic organisms and are covered with soft and hard corals. A perfect start before setting sail to go south.

But our main destination is the Cenderawasih Bay Marine National Park, which means Bay of the “Bird of Paradise”. At more than 14,000 km2 the Cenderawasih Bay Marine National Park is the biggest of its kind in Indonesia and is largely… UNKNOWN!

What about the reefs? Equipped with many maps and charts, we checked out a few reefs on the two-day journey to the south. We found some healthy reefs. One dive site had an amazing number of intact hard corals stretching out endlessly along the fringing reef. We encountered a couple of reef sharks and many different species of reef fish, barracuda, an eagle ray, turtles, and much more. I even sighted a shy dugong while snorkelling.

Later, we did an amazing tour by zodiac venturing up a narrow river that cut through the thick rainforest, we saw a number of large hornbills gliding around the treetops. We had time to visit only one village but it is obvious that there are still so many places to discover and explore!

On 8th Dec 2011, we finally arrived at Kwatisore Bay, home of the whale sharks. The reason behind our first exploration tour to this area were first reports on unusual encounters with colossal whale sharks that gather around traditional fishermen platforms, called bagan in the Indonesian language. At night and with the help of huge lamps, the fishermen catch mainly small sardines but also bigger fish. We heard that a large number of whale sharks come as well to get their share. The local fishermen believe that whale sharks bring good luck, so they started offering them baitfish. The whale sharks probably would try to eat the sardines caught in the nets and thus destroying them if they were not fed, but hey, who cares right now which theory is right -- we cannot wait to get there and see it with our own eyes!

In the early morning we dropped anchor at a nearby bagan. At 5:30 am, we quickly moved the speed boat to the fishermen`s bagan and asked what was going on, as we saw that they were hand feeding some giants right at the surface! By 6:00 am everybody was up and running around in great excitement, trying to find our diving equipment, we got into the zodiacs which dropped us in front of the bagan.

The next hour was a dive that all of us will remember forever. The sunlight was starting to break through the surface, and in just a few metres depth we were literally surrounded by these imposing creatures! Michael took a picture in which we later counted nine of these awesome whale sharks. There were smaller ones, maybe 3-4 metres long, some other medium sized ones but one of the magnificent animals was as long as a school bus, maybe 10 metres. They came very close to us, and believe me, they made eye contact just to swim around you, gently, not to harm you with their powerful tail fins! They seemed to interact with us and some of them actually appeared to enjoy the scuba divers' bubbles and performed almost vertically in front of us.

Gentle, massive, curious, extraordinarily beautiful, hungry, fearless, astonishing, inspiring… these are the adjectives I would use to describe them. Mind blowing!

In fact, little is known about Rhincodon typus: they breathe through gills like fish and they are cold-blooded like fish but the “whale” part refers to size and how the animals feed. There are only three known shark species that filter feed, swimming though plankton-rich water, maws agape. Water goes in carrying plankton and fish of all sizes and water without nutrients flows out. If the fish is too big then the shark spits it out! At one point, I was snorkelling at the surface videoing one whale shark being fed by one of the bagan fishermen, when another giant gathered next to the first one, maws wide open and a larger sized sardine, rejected by the giant, ended on my head! I was laughing until a third one appeared and somehow angled me amongst them. This was the only somewhat scary moment when I was surrounded by a total of maybe 120,000 pounds altogether and no way to escape. They gently pushed me away and I got out without any harm.

We stayed for two full days and dived around the same bagan, at any time of the day and night. We just couldn’t get enough of them! There were times when we found “only” two interacting with us, then their number increased again while in the afternoon they seemed to disappear to come back again in the early morning hours of the day.

I interviewed the local fishermen and here is another theory: The local people believe that whale sharks bring good luck and therefore they protect them. But a fisherman named Samsudin described an interesting symbiosis between man and shark – the fishermen fish sardines during the night. Because the whale sharks are interested only in small fish, they come and get small sardines (ikan puri) from the fishermen; in return, whale sharks herd the larger swimmers like tuna and rainbow runners towards the floating platforms which the fishermen harvest and sell for a better price than the small ikan puri on the local market.

Whatever theory is right – and some scientific studies will certainly take place to better understand this unique behaviour – the main point is that these awesome sharks will stay protected and hopefully continue to display such a magnificent show for future divers.