 Attaining proportions of 50 feet (15 m) and 30,000 pounds (13,500 kg), the whale shark (Rhincodon typus) is the world’s largest fish. As is the case with the majority of the oceans’ larger creatures, whale sharks are filter-feeders. When feeding, these behemoths gulp down concentrations of tiny mid-water, marine organisms collectively called plankton. The sharks repeatedly open and close their enormous mouths, taking in as much plankton-filled water as possible in their quest for food. No need to worry, while whale sharks have a mouth full of as many as 5,000 teeth, the biggest one is only about 3 mm long. The plankton gets hung up in the whale shark’s tiny teeth and gill rakers.
Capturing images like these two requires both good fortune and skill. First, you have to find a whale shark, and you need to be in plankton-rich water so the animal has an opportunity to feed. When photographing a whale shark or other large marine creature, it is usually best to use a wide-angle lens and get as close as possible to the animal so that you shoot through as little water and as few suspended particles as possible. This technique leads to sharper pictures with richer detail and color. In this instance, the top photograph was taken from about eight feet (2.5 m) away. The tight shot of the open mouth with the vortices of water created when the shark rapidly opened its mouth was taken from a distance of about two (0.6 m) feet from the shark.
From an underwater photographer’s perspective, the presence of plankton is both the good and bad news. The plankton attracts whale sharks, but if I had used a strobe to illuminate the shark, light from the strobe would strike out-of-focus planktonic creatures and other particles in the foreground and would likely produce distracting blobs in the image known as “backscatter.” As a result, I left my strobes on the boat, a choice that made my camera system more compact and easier to swim with, but that also meant I needed to use natural light to expose the scene.
I took a light meter reading on the entire scene and chose to slightly underexpose the overall image so I would not blow out the details in the highlighted areas of the shark’s body and the surrounding water. There was plenty of sunlight so I was able to use a relatively fast shutter speed (1/250th of a second) to help freeze the action, thus producing a sharp image.
Capturing these images required a lot of looking and waiting, and then repeatedly sliding into the water while snorkeling from a skiff because the sharks are often on the move. But with repeated effort and some good luck, I got my shots and enjoyed an extraordinary diving moment.
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