Rare Whale Shark Seen In Local Waters

July 20, 2007

Release from: Kevin Lollar
News-Press (Florida)

Recreational fishermen often say they’ve seen a shark bigger than their boat, and all you can do is say, “Uh huh.”

But don’t discount the fish story told by Jerry Helms and Harry Haskins of St. James City and Richard Nadeau of Cape Coral.

The three fishermen were aboard Nadeau’s 26-foot boat Sunday about 35 miles off Boca Grande Pass when they saw a whale shark, a rare species in this part of the Gulf of Mexico — whale sharks are the largest fish in the sea and can grow to 45 feet.

“He just showed up,” Haskins said. “He had about 50 cobia swimming around him and pilotfish. What a beautiful sight.”

Whale sharks, which are plankton eaters, are far more common in the northern Gulf of Mexico than the eastern Gulf, said George Burgess, director Florida Program for Shark Research.

“What they’re looking for are big blooms of food,” Burgess said. “Off the mouth of the Mississippi River, you have a lot of nutrient-rich water, which starts the grand scheme of things. Phytoplankton, the plant part of plankton, bloom, which is followed by a bloom of zooplankton, the animal part.

“Then come animals that eat the zooplankton. Whale sharks are the largest of those, and they go to town on it.”

Researchers are just starting to understand whale shark movements, Burgess said.

At certain times of the year, large numbers show up off Belize to eat eggs of spawning snappers and groupers and the north coast of the Yucatan Peninsula, where they feed on algal blooms caused by nutrient-rich waters from the deep Caribbean Sea.

“In my 32 years in Florida, I haven’t heard of many whale sharks on the west coast of Florida,” Burgess said. “They go where the food is. They tend to stay off shore, but in Belize, these suckers come right along the edge of the barrier reef, where the snappers and groupers are doing their thing.

“It’s like a place with 49-cent hamburgers will have a big line, and a place with the $7.98 model has not such a big line.”

So, in effect, Helms, Haskins and Nadeau got lucky.

“He was there about 10 minutes,” Haskins said. “He came up and kind of tasted the boat a little bit: He put his mouth up there to check it out.

“He swam around the boat. Then he swam away, turned around and swam back, then swam away. He was bigger than the boat. It was so cool.”