World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Author:Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
Published: 2020-12-14T16:00:00+00:00

WHALE SHARK

Rhincodon typus

When the dive master yelled, Flaaat! my legs seized with terror and my body tried its best to morph into the shape of a pancake. But since I was floating on the surface of the six-million-gallon Ocean Voyager tank at the Georgia Aquarium, and since my ears were submerged, the command sounded more like AAABBATTTTTTT! Just minutes before, we guest snorkelers had been instructed over and over again: If you hear me shout, “Flat,” that means you’ve got a whale shark swimming directly under you. Flatten your body so your belly doesn’t skim her back. I could hardly believe a fish, longer and wider than a school bus (and weighing more than a fully loaded one!), was swimming directly toward me. I thought for sure I would be swallowed whole by her open mouth.

Improbable, of course—whale sharks only eat plankton and bits of shrimp, and their throats are the size of a quarter—but I could picture it so clearly: my then two-year-old son would never even remember me, would be haunted forever by the loss of his mother, the first known casualty of being accidentally gummed to bits by a gentle whale shark. Such a dumb legacy to leave him in this way! But at the last possible moment before I thought she would crash into me, the whale shark sank just low enough to not touch me at all, though her dorsal fins almost brushed up against the belly of my wetsuit. If I’d wanted to, I could have reached down and petted her spotted back when the dive master wasn’t looking, but I was too terrified to do anything but float, lifting my belly and curving my back as far up as it would let me as I tried to get out of the shark’s way.

It was as if she was toying with me—wanting to frighten me just enough to let me know exactly who was queen of this tank. The shark repeated her close encounters with me several more times during my snorkel session, even though there were five other snorkelers and two dive masters in the tank. Each time, I watched her giant eyeball, curious as a spaniel’s, turn toward my mask. Very rare to happen at all, let alone to the same person, said the dive master.

By the time I climbed the metal ladder out of the tank, I could barely walk on the concrete deck. All the muscles in my arms and legs had been tensed for the last half hour, and suddenly even the lightweight snorkel system seemed as heavy as a bag of mulch. In the locker room, I couldn’t yet bear to be back into street clothes. When I was sure all the other snorkelers had left to collect their souvenir photos, I sat down on a wooden bench. Still wearing my half-unzipped wetsuit, I wept with my face in my hands.

In my mother’s homeland of the Philippines, whale sharks occupy a prominent place in folklore. One of my

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