Imagine staring at the largest fish in the ocean as it swims straight towards you with its huge mouth wide open. Would you be panicking? What would you do? Would you be a little more relaxed if you knew the monstrous marine animal only ate plankton and small marine life? What if you also knew the fish couldn't see really well? It doesn't know if you are plankton or not.
A diver, almost swallowed by a whale shark off the coast of Mexico, didn't have to imagine this frightening scenario. It really happened, and the diver almost ended up in the belly of the whale. Or did he?
The diver that almost became lunch was a photographer who was snapping photos in the midst of about 600 of 40-foot long whale sharks during a feeding frenzy. The sharks were getting their fill of tuna spawn and had no desire to devour a diver.
The photograph is amazing and shows just how close this diver came to being sucked in this poor unsuspecting and stunningly majestic whale's enormous mouth which measures up to 1.5 meters wide and holds up to 350 rows of teeth. That's a lot of chompers. Despite all their pearly whites, this docile shark eats by sucking in huge amounts of water filled with spawn into its jaws and filtering its feed.
According to sources, if the diver almost swallowed by the whale shark had actually been sucked in, the shark would have just spat him back out. What a relief!
So, even though the chances were slim the diver would have made it into the belly of the whale, the diver was probably quite relieved to be able to escape those 350 rows of tiny teeth and the horrifying experience of being sucked into a huge mouth anyway.
0 comments:
Post a Comment