Rare whale shark visit off Sarasota coast reveals this kindler, gentler shark is in local waters more often than one thinks
Whale sharks just aren’t something you see every day, even in the offshore waters of the Gulf of Mexico in our area. But that doesn’t mean it never happens.
In fact, it happened to some boaters approximately 26 miles off the coast of Sarasota County not too long ago, on July 3.
A video on TikTok surfaced with the encounter, taken by a charter captain named Michael Russo with the alias “Boca Grande Tarpon.” It was captioned “One of the coolest encounters I have ever had out of Sarasota. I think that sharks just follow me.”
There are several reasons Russo might have said that. For one, another video shown on his feed was of blue water full of sharks around his boat in the Dry Tortugas.
However, that isn’t the question here. The question is, how often do we have whale sharks in our waters? We know we have many kinds that live here year round, and some that cruise through during migration, like a great white does from time to time. While their name is deceiving, whale sharks – which can grow to 50 feet long and weigh as much as 25,000 pounds – feed on plankton like a whale does. But make no mistake, they are sharks.
When you read the comments on many postings about whale sharks on social media, you find that for some strange reason there appears to be a large population of people who dream of swimming with whale sharks, which are gentle and very slow-moving, have no designs on humans as their food source and appear to try to play with people. Researchers do not recommend this practice, of course, but it’s more for the shark’s safety than the humans’. Apparently they may give a human a decent bop with their tails by accident, though.
Whale sharks aren’t commonly seen in these waters, even though they do live in the Gulf. The most common place to see them is around the Yucatan Peninsula between May and September, as well as around the mouth of the Mississippi River.
In 2021 the periodical “Frontiers” said that researchers had recorded only 800 sightings of whale sharks between 1989 and 2016. When the whale sharks’ movements were graphed, only one of their paths came close to offshore Sarasota waters.
In the last decade, though, there have been numerous years when they have been spotted around Sarasota’s offshore waters, leaving one to question why these infrequent visitors would be in the same place around the same time so often.
Another strange fact about these endangered creatures might help solve the mystery. The majority of whale sharks that travel to the Gulf to feed are males – as many as 70 percent. Perhaps Sarasota is their “guys vacation spot” while they leave the wives at home.
