How to swim with (whale) sharks

Never have the laws of personal space been clearer to me than when a giant speckled whale shark buzzed my wet-suited torso.

Swimmers and divers who climb in to Georgia Aquarium’s 6.3-million gallon Ocean Voyager exhibit know to stay 5 feet from the animals and the slimy walls of the tank. But nobody let the fish in on the rules.

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Pouya Dianat / pdianat@ajc.com

AJC reporter Jamie Gumbrecht puts on her oxygen tank swimming with the world’s largest fish — a whale shark — at the Georgia Aquarium.

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Pouya Dianat / pdianat@ajc.com

The Georgia Aquarium is home to a wide variety of rays and sharks, including the whale sharks and a brand new manta ray.

• Video: Swimming with whale sharks

• Photos: Swimming with the fishes

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When the tunnel vision of my dive mask went from great, blue marine habitat to white-spotted shark skin, they were just making it clear: I was in their space.

Since June, the Aquarium has welcomed a dozen visitors — six divers and six swimmers — into its waters every day, an opportunity that’s sold out through the end of the year. It costs $190 for 30 minutes of swimming with the fishes, plus two hours to shimmy in and out of a wet suit, shower out the salt and watch a video of the underwater experience.

Critics argue it’s risky to expose the animals, especially the little-researched whale shark, to new batches of humans every day. Aquarium spokeswoman Meghann Gibbons says the program hasn’t caused problems so far, and the swims and dives would end if they did.

My trouble had nothing to do with fish, everything to do with human error: I like to breathe through my nose. I grew up splashing around shallow, rocky beaches in Michigan, where putting mask to water is a fruitless exploration of mud and minnows. To keep my head down and suck air through a black plastic regulator was challenge enough without dodging whale sharks and 7,000 of their finned friends.

The divers take a guided journey up and down a tank that’s up to 30 feet deep in spots. As a swimmer, I skidded along the surface and still got an eyeful of Crimson snapper, the intellectual-looking Humphead wrasse — and the 9-foot, 456-pound manta ray, Nandi, who just entered the tank last week.

The Aquarium has adjusted the program since its debut to instruct swimmers to stroke gently and kick as little as possible. People never cannonballed into the exhibit, but the new practice keeps sea creatures calmer and likelier to swim close.

As we swam, we traced a wide figure-eight from the backside of the exhibit, over a glass smile-and-wave tunnel and on to the front side, where I spied kids in strollers and moms with cameras.

Along the way, I got up-close with whale sharks Alice, Trixie, Yushan and Taroko. The lady whale sharks are larger than their male counterparts, and Trixie has a white strip on her fin. You can tell the males apart by the company they keep; Taroko, the cool kid on the playground, is always tailed by a school of yellow fish.

While they’re a main attraction from the viewing windows, the huge fish dominate the view inside the tank. Sometimes I spotted their shadows crawling toward me before I saw them. They made a silent, surprise approach that might be cause for worry if I were a shrimp. Their mouths stretch up to four feet and hide 300 rows of tiny teeth, but a whale shark esophagus is the size of a quarter. There’s little to fear in the Aquarium’s tank but your own klutziness.

My swim companions — two teens, their guide, a husband and wife, two dive masters and an underwater photographer — did a lot of pointing and hand-holding. I imagine there was giggling, but it’s hard to tell through the bubbles. To look down and lose sight of them made me feel like a child lost in a little-traveled wing of a museum: lots to see, nothing to touch, nobody around but a few thousand precious artifacts. Just keep breathing.

The climb out of the pool feels chillier than the 78-degree water warmed inside the wet suit. I successfully shook the water out of my ears, if not the mental chorus to “Under the Sea.” It takes just a minute to slip off the heavy oxygen tank, rinse off and walk on unflippered feet to the cement floor around the tank.

It’s such a sterile, man-made environment, it seems like you could almost slip off your sandals and dip your feet back in the pool.

But it’s not a pool. It’s a habitat, one that smells like fish, tastes like salt and reveals a shark’s dorsal fin where you just ventured.