Georgia Aquarium - Dan's Swim with Whale Sharks - Mar. 27, 2009

Dan's swim with the sharks in the Ocean Voyager exhibit at the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta...

The football-field sized tank is HUGE, waaaay bigger than I'd expected. There were four whale sharks, the only captive whale sharks in the Western hemisphere, the two females are the largest --about 21 feet long. There's a manta ray, the only one in a U.S. aquarium, ever! There's hundreds of other rays (stingers intact), great hammerhead sharks, sand-tiger sharks, black-tipped reef sharks, and more than 50,000 other fish. Even the schooling fish that look small in the video are pretty big. For more info, visit the Georgia Aquarium's website (http://www.georgiaaquarium.com) and find the Ocean Voyager exhibit to see what was all in there (http://www.georgiaaquarium.org/animalguide/oceanvoyager/)

This experience was mesmerizing, exhilirating, inspiring, and all-around awesome.




Family/friends: In our six-member swim group's formation, I'm in the back left. I'm not shown right away, but there's a good shot of me when the cameraman comes toward me through several smaller fish and I wave with both hands and give the thumbs up sign as a whale shark swims just below. The Georgia Aquarium sends a cameraman in with the group to record the Swim. This footage is from a DVD they sell for $50 after the Swim -- the DVD also contains some stock footage with nice-quality close-up video of various animals in the tank that didn't swim near enough to the group. Swim program costs about $225. Certified scuba divers can participate in a Dive program for $300 or so. They allow one group of up to six divers per day and one group of six swimmers per day. You're not supposed to touch the sharks, but the whale sharks made contact with me four times -- just minutes into the 35-minute swim, one came up from directly behind me and I hadn't yet perfected the flatten-out-at-the-surface move you're supposed to do, and I was still in more of a treading-water position. As I tried to get my legs up and flatten out it nudged me with its dorsal fin in the back of the crotch and butt, then I got a light swat from its tail on my right hip, and there were two other tail hits -- all four were very mild touches including the one 'goose' from a whale shark.

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• Swim with Sharks
• Whale Sharks
• Georgia Aquarium

[tehhanabananaful]

I'm about to do that next week! :)

[656Tinkerbell]

i actually went there not too long ago, and it was fun. I wanted to swim with them too!! :D