Okay, so I’m getting mixed feelings about writing this one. I guess this is how you feel when you don’t exactly know the point of your story? Should I make you feel like this one is a MUST-GO-TO attraction? or the other way around? (I’m afraid I might start something here but whatever this is just my opinion so I guess anything goes) PS : but please tell me what you think of this..
Okay so before this mixed feeling happened I was just so psyched about having Oslob in our itinerary for Cebu. I mean, swimming with whale sharks? that’s a big check in my bucket list! 🙂
But upon arriving in Barangay Tan-awan, I was not expecting a line of resorts to choose from so we just opted for the one in front of where our bus stopped. We immediately inquired for the prices and other things to do like rentals, food and stuff.
P3000 Scuba Diving with the whale sharks
P1000 Snorkeling with the whale sharks
P500 Watching the whale sharks from a boat
P500 Underwater Camera (It’s a FUJIFILM FinePix XP70 for those who doesn’t have an underwater cam or want another source for your group photos then you can rent this)
We rented one and will show you the quality of the photo later.
After a short briefing, we went to our bangka. On the way to the snorkeling spot I saw a line of boats waiting for the whale sharks (maybe), I had this feeling that we were at those usual zoo’s where animals are only kept for the purpose of gaining profit. (Well, that’s how I felt)
Well, anyway we were only given 30 minutes to do whatever, part of that was waiting for the whale shark to come close so we could have our photo taken with them. I never expected the water to be that salty, we were floating up in seconds! (In this body, I could barely stay down. I felt like a buoy! Hah!) So it was a bit challenging for the photo part! All of us wore rash guards that was constantly trying to remove itself from our body, so eventually 50% of the photos were 50% nude. 🙂 🙂 🙂
Seeing and being close to a whale shark felt amazing! but why do I feel a bit sad about this? I saw how the fisherman would feed them a bucket of fish to get them closer to where they wanted them but doesn’t this feel wrong? I mean, aren’t they overfeeding them in that way? Are the nutrients in the fish that they feed equivalent to the fishes that they normally eat and supposed to be eating?
It’s a bit amazing how the whale sharks would just go up and eat those fishes near the bangka, but don’t they get hit by the bangka sometimes? Is this really okay? I’ve seen & read blogs of people where they talk about how enchanting it is to be swimming and “touching” the whale sharks  –to–  blogs that says that this might break migration cycles, breeding and the natural ways of the whale sharks.
Gaaah, this is confusing me but what do you guys think? (Opinions and facts about whale sharks are welcome) There will be no fighting in this page. Thank you so very very mucho. 🙂
Okay, so that aside, I’ll let you see the rest of the photos 🙂
30 mins was so damn fast to get those perfect shots that you wanted! I never felt so rushed in taking photos. Even if we had 2 GOPROs w/ us (one was mine and the other was Bianca’s) plus 1 underwater FUJIFILM FinePix XP70 camera that we rented for our group shots was still stressful enough to take good photos because of the salty water that was lifting us up! So here’s what I’ve managed to save and enhance.
Out of a hundred photos here’s 2 of the only ‘good’ group photo I enhanced and could show you from the FUJIFILM FinePix XP70 that we rented from the resort.
The rest are from Kanjie my GOPRO HERO 4 SILVER.
Camera used: GoPro Hero 4 Silver & FUJIFILM FinePix XP70
Thanks for checking out this post!
– AENRI (Aah-Yen-Ree)
An Amateurs Perspective 