Rare whale shark sighting off Cairns’ Great Barrier Reef

Passengers aboard a popular diving vessel have had a rare sighting of a whale shark while sailing along the Great Barrier Reef. See the video.

Passengers aboard Divers Den vessel AquaQuest witnessed a rare sighting of a whale shark at Troppos on Norman Reef on the weekend.

Divers Den operations co-ordinator Melissa Alps said sighting a whale shark so close to Cairns was quite rare and in a double treat for the crew, the whale shark followed the vessel twice.

“The whale shark was seen two days in a row by AquaQuest on Saturday, 21 at Caves on Norman Reef and Sunday 22 at Troppos on Norman Reef,” Ms Alps said.

The rare encounter was first reported by dive instructor Jonathan Philips and his group of divers.

“The first sighting of the whale shark on Saturday was underwater by one of the dive instructors Jonathan, the group of certified divers he was guiding, and two of the Divemaster trainees,” she said.

Passengers and crew aboard Divers Den vessel AquaQuest witnessed a rare sighting of a whale shark at Troppos on Norman Reef.

“They saw it from the back as it was swimming away from them.”

Mr Phillips approximated the whale shark to be four to five metres long.

“Sadly no one got a video,” Ms Alps said.

“The second sighting on Sunday was seen by a lot of the guests and crew on-board AquaQuest. It was lunch time, so no one was in the water unfortunately.”

She said the whale shark swam along the reef wall toward the back of the boat, before making a turn, diving down and returning to swim along the reef wall.

“The whole thing was very quick and lasted about two minutes,” she said.

“The crew and the customers were so excited to see the whale shark as this is a rare sighting on the Great Barrier Reef.”

While whale sharks commonly live in tropical waters, Ms Alps said sighting one so far north was quite rare.

“They don’t aggregate on the reef here like they would at Ningaloo Reef (in Western Australia), so there’s no set place you can see them,” she said.

“I’ve been here for seven years and I’ve only seen two. They’re just not commonly seen out of Cairns.”

Originally published as Rare whale shark sighting off Cairns’ Great Barrier Reef