Posted on 07/24/2011 11:01:10 AM PDT by nickcarraway
A diver that was close to be swallowed by a whale shark while the giant was feeding with plankton was captured by a photographer. Mauricio Handler took the picture in the waters of Mujeres Island in Mexico.
It was a moment when all the 600 whale sharks from that area gathered at one place to feed with plankton, according to Daily Mail in the online edition.
This is a very usual thing, that the whale sharks to gather every years into the Mexico’s waters in order to feed them but they aren’t a danger for the divers. The animals are swimming with their huge mouths open in order to have a big quantity of water and food.
The picture that Handler took appears to be a very dangerous scene, but in fact there isn’t because the animals are inoffensive for the humans, even though there is a hard thing to believe.
The mouth of a whale shark can reach 1,5 meters width and it has 350 rows of teeth. Handler said after this one in a life time event that the image with the diver that was very close to the whale shark’s mouth was an incredible adrenaline scene.
He admitted that in the moment when someone is on water and around him there are only fishes there is a completely new world out there, with other rules and beautiful things. He said that the incident happened right in the moment that the whale shark was feeding and the animal went on his colleague’s direction. He said that the danger didn’t exist because the whale sharks don’t have such a good sight, but anyway his colleague succeeded to leave from that direction. But, if the whale shark had been swallow his colleague by accident, the animal had been spit him out immediately. The whale shark is the biggest fish in the world, but is not dangerous for the people. The animal can have a weight of 40 tons and it feeds with planktons and little fish. Because of the animal’s conduct around the people a lot of photographers wanted over the time to capture it into their pictures.
The scientists from Mozambique tried to measure last year a whale shark and they photographed the animal with a very performing device that uses the laser technology. They wanted to know the period in which the whale shark gets to 20 meters length.
Babelfish translation?
Cool photo, though. :-)
I agree.
Jonah?
Wow, almost the story of Jonah.
ya, I’m sure the whale would spit him out right away, forgive my cynicism heh. Although maybe... after all Jonah was spit out, but it took 3 days.
Frankly, I'd rather stick to the other side of the food chain. Some fish on the grill sounds great for this afternoon.
The guy wouldn’t have even qualified as an appetizer.
According to International Geographic, if he did get swallowed whole, the guy could have swam out of the stomach, across the idio syncratic membrane, through the abdullah oblongata and climbed out the blow hole.
“I’m not totally buying the story that the diver was never in danger. Even had the whale immediately spit the diver out, he could have lost his oxygen and been in danger of not getting back to the surface in time.”
Heck, that’s nothing. Same thing happens anytime someone gets between Michelle 0 and a dessert bar.
He would have needed a knife. Whale sharks don’t have blowholes.
According to International Geographic, he could simply grab one of the many cuttlefish in the whale’s stomach (or tummy) and use that to “saw” his way out through the non-existent blowhole. It’s very similar to the escape in The Poseidon Adventure. I suggest you watch a few more movies before you go around making snotty remarks.
Priceless!!
Why would it need teeth, much less 350 rows of teeth, to eat plankton and small fish?
It most likely would have spat him out - a whale shark’s throat is tiny - about the size of your wrist. They probably know how to avoid sucking in stuff that’s too big to eat, so I doubt it would have even allowed him into its mouth at all.
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