The Dorsal Fin

A video of some guy “riding” a whale shark hit Digg today. Sadly, this poorly-shot low-quality video will probably end up being viewed more times than some of the better whale shark footage that is already out there on the net, because it features "some crazy guy" and has already landed on Break.com, which has a fairly high number of viewers.

So, what’s wrong with a guy riding a whale shark? After all, a single human grabbing on to the back of a 40′ (12m) animal can’t possibly cause any physical harm to the animal can he? Well, probably not, but that doesn’t make the act any less disrespectful to the animal. I’ve seen people argue that if whale sharks really didn’t like people jumping on them, riding them, etc. that the sharks would just swim away. That might be true, but generally, whale sharks are on the lookout for food, and if they found a source of food, a pesky human might not trump the need to eat. Look at this way, if the only grocery store around had harmless gnomes, who climb on your back while you’re shopping for food, do you leave the grocery store hungry, or do you just put up with the annoying gnomes? I’d just tolerate the gnomes and not go hungry, but it wouldn’t make the gnomes any less annoying.

I can totally understand the temptation to jump in the water with a whale shark. I appreciate the experience as much as anybody. However, grabbing onto a whale shark is a completely different story (unless, apparently, you’re trying to impress your fishing buddies).

While it doesn’t really make the behavior in the video any less ignorant, at the end of the day, there are far worse things going on in the world than some guy harassing a whale shark. Most of us have done some ignorant and stupid things in our lives. I guess the difference is that most people don’t film those things and post them on the internet for the world to marvel at.