Turneff for May 2017 whale shark

[Kharon]

... Personally I'd myself never go to Belize only to see whale sharks, they are too hit and miss. There are other places with much better odds.

I'm game - don't have my heart set on Belize only on whale sharks. Tell me more.

 

[Downing]

Your odds of seeing a whale shark at Turneffe are about 1 in 2500.

So you're saying there's a chance. Yeah! (apologies to Dumb and Dumber )

In Belize, your chances of a WS encounter are pretty good in April and May, not as good in March and June. But you could go further north and base a trip from Cancun (ugh), Cozumel or Playa del Carmen. I think, but don't know for sure, that the Mexican tours are restricted to snorkeling, not diving.

As far as Turneffe, we've stayed at Turneffe Island Lodge/Resort twice for a total of 3 weeks. Never went Whale Shark hunting, but we did come across a pod of Short Fin Pilot Whales once, which looked like really big dolphins rathe than small whales.

Back in Placencia, both Roberts Grove and Turtle Inn have their own in house dive ops but I don't know if they hunt Whale Sharks. Regardless, my choice there is always Splash. Great dive op, and I've dived with them so many times I'm friends with everyone who works there.

 

[mmmbelows]

I'm game - don't have my heart set on Belize only on whale sharks. Tell me more.

If you don't have to scuba with them hands down the choice is Isla Mujeres, the chances of success there approaches 100%, currently regarded as the largest aggregation of whale sharks on the planet. There is also the Philippines and Mozambique. There is also Utila but I'd put that at even worse odds and not go there just to see whale sharks.

 

[diversteve]

We snorkeled with 6-8 over two days off Utila. The EcoOcean folks and others have Whale Shark research facilities in town so I'd disagree with the above poster. It is however very seasonal - on our trip, we had an expert from Shark.org doing research so we participated in a cell sampling and some photography that resulted in my buddy submitting photos of what we thought was a new one - later they found it in the database.

If you find Bonaire inexpensive - wait till you see Utila town prices...surprising since it's so remote. Lots of backpackers end up there for some odd reason. You will have a 2nd flight from the mainland or Roatan - that runs about $150 r/t. Or there's the ferries from Roatan - $100 r/t but that will kill a morning/afternoon. We were on Roatan at noon, Utila at 5PM.

Some of the shops run special trips just for that - on ours we did two dives in the morning then looked for them nearby. If we found them, we dropped on them, otherwise we called it after an hour or so and did a third dive instead. The odds of diving with one are pretty miniscule, they like the deeper water off the north side and you won't be diving at those depths.

Idk if it's always the case but most of ours were 16-20' juvenile males. One big female once - longer than the 30' boat we were on. She was barely moving her tail and it was all we could do to keep up with her.

The legal number of drops per boat is limited so the captains cooperate via VHF to improve their sightings/tips for all.
Honduran regulations are snorkel only, boat stopped and only two drops per boat with no more than 12? snorkelers in the water simultaneously. I saw the last rule broken several times.

 

[Hank49]

If I was coming here to dive for whale sharks. I'd stay at Glovers Reef. There are two or three resorts there and it's closer to Gladden than Placencia. And, when you're not looking for whale sharks, the other dives there are really nice and really close to the resorts (5-10 min boat ride). There is nothing else to do there but dive though.

But as someone mentioned, the best dive site in Belize is the Elbow of Turneffe. Most scuba tours never really see what's there though because the fish are educated when it comes to bubble blowers. I'm guessing it's because someone is probably shooting fish there in the late evening or early morning on scuba. But there is a "sweet spot" where I've consistently seen more fish in one small area than anywhere I've dived. (Sipadan, Tubbataha, to name a few). I think you have to free dive it though to not scare all the fish away.

I have heard it's now officially a Conservation Zone, meaning no take any fish. I hope they can enforce it. It is one of God's personal aquariums…..that's all I can figure. Yep.