The fifth day of the first 2017 Wetpixel Whale Sharks expedition followed a familiar pattern: Off to the jetty at 7 am and motor roughly north for around one hour.

Find very large numbers of whale sharks, get in the water and take photographs!

A new quirk was that the Park Authorities had a launch out enforcing the rules with all the boats out with the sharks. These now include a maximum of 2 people (plus a guide) in the water at any time and restrictions on how the boats manoeuvre.

As it was our first group’s final day, I elected to stay on the boat. Many thanks to Hannes Klostermann and Lureen Ferretti for sharing their images from the day.

There were a lot of sharks!

The end of the day was interesting. As on of the last boats out with the sharks, the patrol boat decide too come and investigate what we were up to. They saw our cameras and leaped to a summary judgement that we were “filming for commercial purposes” and hence did not have the prerequisite permits. This caused some consternation!

On returning to the jetty, this was all reported to our operators Keen M, who got in contact with the authorities an explained what was actually going on. This emphasises how important it is to use efficient local operators who can swiftly sort out issues like these.

So we bid a sad farewell to our first group today and welcome our second on to Isla Mujeres. Thank you all and I hope your travels home were straightforward.

Day 1.
Day 2.
Day 3.
Day 4.
Day 5.
Day 6.
Day 7.
Days 8/9/10.