The whale shark is endangered. And tourism has a lot to do with it.

Sep 2

10 min read

There is an image that repeats itself millions of times on Instagram every year. A tourist smiling at the camera. Behind — or below, or beside — a whale shark.

Sometimes the tourist touches it. Sometimes they ride it. Sometimes they push food into its mouth while a motorboat roars two metres away.

The image looks idyllic. An encounter with nature. A life experience.

What the image doesn't show is what is happening outside the frame: dozens of boats crowded into the same spot. Hundreds of people in the water simultaneously around the same animal. The whale shark interrupting its feeding to dodge bodies.

Abandoning the area. Altering migratory routes it has been following for millions of years.

What the image doesn't show is the data published by the IUCN: whale shark populations have declined by over 50% globally in the last 75 years. In the Indo-Pacific — its primary zone — the decline reaches 63%. It is classified as an Endangered species. Galapagos Defenders of Wildlife

And one of the factors contributing to that decline has a name. It's called irresponsible mass tourism.

This post is not an attack on nature tourism — quite the opposite. It is a defence of it. Because responsible tourism is one of the most powerful tools for protecting the whale shark. And irresponsible tourism is exactly the opposite.

Who the whale shark is: what you need to know before we continue

The whale shark (Rhincodon typus) is the largest fish on the planet. Adults can exceed 18 metres in length and 20 tonnes in weight. They are slow-moving animals that filter plankton and small organisms by passing water through their gills, and they have a temperament that is rarely seen in an animal of that scale: they are completely harmless to humans.

They have no functional teeth for capturing large prey. They are not aggressive. They do not attack. When they approach humans — which they occasionally do out of curiosity — they do so slowly, without threat, with that unhurried presence that makes divers who have seen them in the wild always repeat the same word: majestic.

That docility is exactly what makes them so vulnerable.

An animal that doesn't flee, doesn't attack, and allows itself to be surrounded — is the perfect candidate for mass-contact tourism. And the characteristic that should protect them has turned them into victims of one of the most destructive phenomena in modern nature tourism.

Some basic facts about their biology that explain why they are so vulnerable:

They take up to 30 years to reach sexual maturity. They have low reproductive rates. Every calf that reaches adulthood represents decades of evolutionary investment.

When a reproductive adult dies, that loss is not recovered in years — it is recovered in decades, if it is recovered at all.

They migrate thousands of kilometres following plankton. Their routes are predictable. And that predictability is exactly what concentrates them at specific points on the planet — where tourism operators wait for them.

The problem: what is really happening at sighting hotspots

In December 2025, the University of South Florida published a study in the Journal of Sustainable Tourism that documented something many in the industry knew but nobody had quantified with rigour: tour boats and swimmers routinely violate Mexico's whale shark tourism rules — even when the waters are far less crowded than the law allows. Futurity

The research, based on drone footage from 2016 and 2022, analysed one of the world's busiest whale shark destinations. The results are disturbing:

Boats approached the animals at prohibited distances as a matter of routine
Swimmers surrounded, touched and harassed whale sharks habitually
The presence of patrol boats did not significantly reduce infractions
In 2022, there was no difference in the frequency of boat distance violations when the patrol boat was present
The situation did not improve between 2016 and 2022 — in some respects it worsened

We are not talking about isolated cases of misinformed tourists. We are talking about a systematic pattern at one of the most visited destinations in the world for this type of experience.

And Mexico is not the exception. It is the most documented example of a problem that repeats itself in Maldives, the Philippines, in Indonesia, in India, in Australia, in the Red Sea. At every point on the planet where whale sharks concentrate seasonally and tourism has discovered there is a business.

What mass tourism does to the whale shark

The damage is not only direct contact — although that damage is real and documented. It is systemic.

Physical contact: a protective layer that doesn't regenerate easily

The whale shark's skin is covered by a layer of protective mucus — a biofilm that acts as a barrier against infection, parasites and bacteria. When a tourist touches the animal — even with one hand, even "gently" — it strips away the protective mucus layer on the shark's skin, leaving it exposed to infection and parasites.

Multiplied by hundreds of contacts per day, in season, over years — the cumulative effect is devastating.

Feeding interruption: the invisible energetic cost

The whale shark is a filter feeder that needs to consume enormous quantities of plankton to sustain its size. Its feeding occurs within specific time windows, at specific locations, following the concentration of plankton.

When dozens of boats and hundreds of swimmers surround a feeding whale shark, the animal essentially has two options: continue feeding in an environment of chaos and pressure, or abandon the area.

A study in the Philippines found that whale sharks altered their natural behaviours due to heavy tourism — surfacing less often, changing direction, and even avoiding areas where they'd been fed or touched. World Animal Protection

An animal that interrupts its feeding depletes energy reserves it needs for migration, for reproduction, for survival. That energetic cost doesn't appear in any Instagram photo. But it's there.

Artificial feeding: the worst damage of all

At some destinations — especially in Southeast Asia — it is common practice for operators to artificially feed whale sharks to keep them in the area and guarantee sightings.

The consequences go far beyond what they appear:

Feeding dependency: animals that are artificially fed gradually lose their natural migratory patterns.

They remain in the artificial feeding zone instead of following the plankton. Sharks accumulated injuries and abrasion damage due to regularly bumping boats while feeding during residency periods. As the feeding activities take place in warm shallow water, the sharks often dive into deeper water off the site to cool down. Marine Megafauna Foundation

Diet alteration: the artificial plankton operators give them is not the same as what they obtain in the wild. The nutritional composition is different. The long-term impact on animal health is not fully documented, but the indications are concerning.

Unnatural concentration: artificial feeding concentrates animals at points that don't correspond to their natural distribution, creating densities of individuals that would not occur spontaneously and that generate additional competition and stress.

Propeller strikes: the most direct physical threat

Whale sharks are slow. Motor boats are not.

Collisions between vessels and whale sharks are far more frequent than operators acknowledge. Animals arrive at sighting points with propeller scars that researchers can identify and catalogue. Those scars are the visible physical record of decades of poorly managed tourism.

At the most crowded points, virtually no adult individual exists without marks from vessel collisions. Those scars are not merely cosmetic — they affect the animal's hydrodynamics, can become infected and in serious cases can be fatal.

The business that destroys what it sells

Here is the cruellest irony of this story.

The whale shark is worth enormously more alive than dead. Sighting tourism generates millions in revenue at the destinations where animals concentrate. Local communities depend economically on those sightings. Operators build their businesses on the presence of the animal.

And yet, the mass tourism model they have built is destroying exactly what makes their business possible.

Whale sharks are listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List, and their populations are currently decreasing. They face a range of threats, including vessel strikes, bycatch, fisheries, finning, tourism, and climate change. IFAW

Whale shark populations have declined by over 50% globally in the last 75 years. In the Indo-Pacific, where most whale shark tourism is concentrated, the decline is 63%. Galapagos

If the trend continues, the business that mass tourism has built will disappear along with the animal. Not in a hundred years. In decades.

We are already seeing the first signs of this. Whale shark sightings largely ceased off Mahé in the Seychelles by 2015, though a large population was documented before 2009, leading to an 8-year cessation of whale shark tourism before increased sightings from 2022. At several points in the Indo-Pacific, animals have stopped appearing in areas where they were once common.

Irresponsible mass tourism is not only harming the whale shark — it is destroying itself.

What you can do: the difference between tourism that destroys and tourism that protects

This is the most important part of the post. Because the solution is not to stop going to see whale sharks. The solution is to go in the right way.

Responsible nature tourism is one of the most powerful tools for conservation. A whale shark that generates income for a local community has an economic protection incentive that no law can replicate. A tourist who chooses an ethical operator is voting with their money in favour of conservation.

These are the rules that separate tourism that protects from tourism that destroys:

Before you go: how to choose the right operator

The question that filters out 80% of bad operators: how many swimmers do they allow simultaneously around the same animal?

The internationally recommended standard is a maximum of 10 swimmers per animal simultaneously. Responsible operators comply with this. Irresponsible ones send 30, 40, 50 people into the water at the same time.

Other questions you should ask before booking:

Do they artificially feed the whale sharks to keep them in the area?
Do they have a written code of conduct and a pre-encounter briefing?
Are their guides in the water during the encounter?
Do they respect minimum distances with vessels?
How many boats coordinate at the same point simultaneously?

If they cannot answer these questions, or if the answer is evasive, find another operator.

During the encounter: the rules that are never broken

Never touch the animal. Under any circumstances. It doesn't matter if it approaches you. It doesn't matter if it seems to "want" contact. It doesn't matter if the guide allows it. Touching strips away the protective mucus layer on the shark's skin, leaving it exposed to infection and parasites. Touching a whale shark is never acceptable regardless of how calm the animal appears or how close it drifts.

Maintain minimum distances. Keep 3 metres from the body and 4 metres from the tail, never touch, approach from the side. These distances are not arbitrary — they are based on research into the animal's behaviour and the point from which the whale shark modifies its behaviour in response to human presence.

Never position yourself in its path. The whale shark has a route. You are the one who moves, not it. Position yourself lateral to its trajectory, never in front.

No flash or strobes. Sudden bright light can startle a feeding whale shark and is banned in most regulated zones. Most encounters happen in bright, shallow water near the surface anyway, so natural light usually does the job.

If the animal moves away, let it go. The encounter ends when the animal decides it ends — not when the tourist has taken enough photos.

Swim slowly and without splashing. Noise and sudden movement in the water generates pressure that the animal detects. Move slowly, in a controlled way, without strong kicks or sudden gestures.

How to recognise a bad operator when you're already there

Sometimes you arrive at a sighting point and realise the operator isn't what they promised. These are the warning signs:

They send you into the water with more than 10 people around the same animal
A guide or tourist touches, rides or grabs the whale shark and nobody intervenes
Boats approach closer than the legal distance to the animal
They give you food to "attract" the whale shark
There was no behaviour briefing before entering the water

If you see any of these things, get out of the water. Report the operator to local authorities. And leave an honest review that warns future visitors.

The hypocrisy of the selfie

There is something that needs to be said clearly, even if it is uncomfortable.

Every photo touching a whale shark that gets posted on social media normalises that behaviour. Every like it receives is an incentive for the next tourist to do the same. Every story sharing that moment becomes advertising for the operator who allowed it.

Social media has turned the harassment of wildlife into aspirational content.

The problem is not just the irresponsible operators — it is the incentive system that rewards them. And each of us is part of that system when we consume, share or ignore that content.

You have more power than you think. A documented negative review can ruin the business of an irresponsible operator. A polite but firm comment under a photo of someone touching a whale shark can mean that person never does it again. A "I'm not going with that operator" during a search can change the market.

Nature tourism is a market. And markets respond to the individual decisions of consumers.

The whale shark that awaits you: the responsible experience

I want to close this post with something important.

Everything we've described — the rules, the distances, the no-touching — is not a set of restrictions that ruin the experience.

It is exactly what makes the experience real.

A whale shark that behaves naturally because it doesn't feel harassed is an infinitely more impressive spectacle than a stressed animal surrounded by fifty people.

An encounter where you respect the distances and the animal decides to approach anyway is one of the most powerful experiences the ocean can offer. And you cannot buy that experience — you can only deserve it by behaving correctly.

At BTO we have seen whale sharks during the pelagic snorkels of our safaris.

And the rule is always the same: the animal decides. You observe. We don't chase. We don't touch. We don't interfere. And precisely because of that, when the encounter happens, it is authentic.

If you want to live that kind of encounter — with respect, with protocol, with the certainty that your presence is not harming the animal — you know where to find us.

Let's talk on WhatsApp. We reply within 24 hours.

Have you witnessed irresponsible behaviour at whale shark encounters first-hand? How did you react? I'd love to read your thoughts in the comments below. 👇🤿