Sea Monsters

We had heard of these giant creatures lurking under still water, circling and thriving in a cove near Donsol. Their legend had spread, in hushed whispers, to ears pricked for mystery as far as Canada.

My brother flew into Hong Kong from Vancouver. We caught a plane to Legaspi first thing the next morning.

Legaspi is the way a child pictures paradise: Clear blue skies with puffy white clouds, green palm trees and a perfectly conical volcano in the background with an omnipresent single soft plume of grey smoke. The whole town is surrounded by bubbly chocolate hills.

The next thing we knew we were bombing through the jungle in a van with a wild-eyed driver. The sun was beating down. The vegetation was lush and overgrown. The road was smooth and curvy and the locals had rice in tarps lain out on patches right there on the asphalt in front of us. We had to serve to miss them as we swung down the road to this sleepy little town. Here we would come face-to-face with the biggest sharks to ever swim the sea: The Butanding.

Jumping on a catamaran we set out to the open water with a guide and spotter at the helm. The wind billowed in our hair and the hot sun caked our backs. The ocean was still, but our spirits were soaring.

Soon, we spotted something: A huge dark shadow just under the surface. We piled to the side and circled round. And with masks strapped to our faces, snorkels in our teeth, and our hearts beating madly we plunged into the deep sea after the creature.

Bubbles. Thrashing. Someone screamed, “Over here.” And we plunged our heads deeper.

All was darkness. And bleak, until we turned in the crystalline murk to behold: An enormous shark mouth, only a few feet away, closing in on us.

The monster was massive. At least 20 feet long, with a maw the size of boat, a guillotine fin slicing the surface and massive gills on its neck that could suck up the whole sea.

It’s a good thing for us, the Butanding, or whale sharks, have no appetite for humans.

We swam with these gentle giants for minutes on end. Filming them, watching them, and they watched us back. And then they’d dive deep and we’d go back to the boat.

We swam with about a dozen sharks that day, never quite sure who was watching whom.

We spent the rest of the afternoon lounging in Donsol and then booked it back to Legaspi where we spent the night under the eerie clouds and a single gray plume of smoke from the sleeping volcano.