Atlanta Aquarium Whale Sharks

[deco_martini]

You don't really dive with the whale sharks. They overweight everyone so that they sink to the bottom (no silting issues). The whale sharks inhabit the top of the water column, you will be at the bottom.

The bottom is a great place to be. The exhibit is a large pelagic themed one. At the bottom you run into giant groupers/bass/wrasse, huge exotic stingrays, wobbegongs, etc.

There is also a friendly manta who acts like a labrador and a nice great hammerhead who makes sure to let the new people in the tank know he is there in an up close and personal way at some point during the dive.

And of course, they just added sand tigers to the tank.

If you are in the Atlanta area, and large pelagics are interesting to you, it is probably worth the money.

 

[mike_s]

I agree $300 for a 30 min dive is very pricey. You can do the EPCOT dive in Disney World for half of that. Still it is a dive i would like to do at least once!!!

AL

Well I did the Epcot dive and I though it too was overpriced for what you got. I think it was $150, or about that.

I think we had a 40 minute dive and half that was spent following around the dive master in single-line-formation so they could shoot video for the pre-positioned cameraman-diver.

If I went back to Epcot next year, I doubt I'd do it again unless my little boy was with us and that way he could see dad scuba diving. Otherwise I'd just pass.

 

[hradford5]

My wife & I did the dive last Thanksgiving. She enjoyed it more than I did. It was OK, but $300 each is a lot of dough for a 1/2 an hour dive in a fishbowl. The whale sharks circle above you, so there's not much to that aspect of it. The sheer variety of species though was quite impressive.
Also, they give you a little behind the scenes tour and the staff & divemasters are 1st rate. To protect the aquarium population from infection, the only gear your allowed to bring is a mask.

 

[oceancat]

I just did the aquarium dives at the National Aquarium in Baltimore over the weekend. It was pretty cool. You get 2 30 min dives for your $300. One dive was in their skate and ray tank which also had 2 sharks and a big turtle and the other dive was in the coral reef tank. They were both enjoyable dives--a bit more to see in the coral reef tank. It's another fun aquarium option and you can get spots to dive it a little more easily than Georgia.

 

[Hetland]

If they would let me take my own camera, I'd do it in a heartbeat

Amen! To That

 

[Timbo131]

My daughter and I dove with the whale sharks in November, It was an awesome experience. There were 3 dive masters (one leader, one photographer and one in the rear to keep the 6' gropers away from us) and 7 divers. You spend 30 minutes in the water, they will provide all equipment but you may bring your own mask. You dive with the whale sharks, black tips, saw tooth, sand sharks and the coolest manta ray. I would highly recommend this dive. My daughter was a little apprehensive when she saw all the different sharks, but when she got out of the water she could not stop raving about this dive.