Originally Posted by
ufgatorpilot
Have you done it? That's been on my to-do list too. My old boss and his wife actually got certified to scuba dive just so that they could do the great white shark dive when they went to South Africa.
Looks like Belize would be a good place for whale sharks, especially since it shouldn't be difficult to get there from Florida.
Did a shark dive off Roatan (which was pretty cool.. have the DVD and all) - the dive master takes you down to a little shelf at around 80-90 feet, he took a bucket of chum... instantly there was about 30-40 sharks about 6-7' + .... they were pretty tame, until they opened that bucket... it was really something else to see all of that like 2 feet away. The weirdest part was the lack of peripheral vision you don't really think about until something bumps you from behind... and it is about 7' and has quite a few teeth.
btw the equipment sucked - My reg failed at like 30', instead of doing the smart thing and heading up, I switched to the alternate and kept going down (the alt worked fine). A few people in my group had some gear problems. If you have a reg, I'd take it with you.
I asked them about whale sharks, they said it's
very rare and scheduling a dive for that is very, very tricky - Belize is the same way. They actually kinda laughed when I asked. There is a 'season' for it... but you could be down in-country diving each day for months until you came across one.
Good luck though!