A fisherman captured video of a rare whale shark near Pattaya, the first reported sighting in nearly six years.
Posted online by Facebook user “Nonstop Naklua,” the two clips with nearly three minutes of footage showed the fisherman with the massive, yet harmless, shark off Koh Phai, one of Pattaya’s Far Islands.
The fisherman said it was the first time he’d seen a whale shark, let alone in Pattaya-area waters.
The shark weighed approximately a half-ton and was not aggressive or shy, even when touched by the fisherman.
Commonly found in the southern gulf and the Andaman Sea, whale sharks are one of only three known species of filter-feeding sharks. While its mouth has approximately 300 teeth, they are so small, they pose no threat to humans or any large animal.
Whale sharks feed on macro-algae, plankton, krill, Christmas Island red crab larvae, and small squid or vertebrates.
Once common in the northern Gulf of Thailand, whale sharks have become so rare that only three others have been reported seen near Pattaya since 2011. The last reported sighting was in June 2015.
