Gentle Giant - The Whale Shark

Bahia de Los Angeles' most famous tourist

The whale shark is the biggest living fish on the planet, the largest specimens thought to be over sixty feet in length. Age estimates for whale sharks are as high as 60 years, but no one really knows how long this species lives. This shark prefers plankton-rich warm waters, with surface temperature around 21-30º C. In the Bahia de Los Angeles, these conditions exist from July through November, as many as ten individual animals have been spotted in the bay on a single day.

Conservation efforts to preserve these creatures have recently become more urgent than ever; the seemingly insatiable thirst for shark fin soup in certain areas of the world is now triggering an increasing harvest of the whale shark around the planet. Commercial trading of not only whale shark fins, but those of almost every other species of shark as well, is centered primarily in Hong Kong.