The Virginian-Pilot
© August 9, 2015
With all the talk this summer about sharks – sightings and attacks – Ken Neill wasn’t going to be surprised by seeing a shark while fishing for marlin along the Norfolk Canyon.
But when he saw the dark figure rise from the depths and cruise into his bait spread, surprise was about all he could feel.
There, just feet behind his boat, was one of the ocean’s most magnificent creatures – a giant whale shark in what is a rare encounter off the coast of Virginia Beach.
Whale sharks frequent tropical waters that must be at least 71 degrees. They don’t venture this far north often.
The waters to the northeast of Cancun, Mexico, have become a thriving location for eco-tourism, where tourists pay to go out and snorkel with these large, but docile creatures.
Strangely enough, it wasn’t Neill’s first encounter with a whale shark off Virginia Beach.
“We saw one about a dozen years ago along the Norfolk Canyon, pretty close to where we saw this one,” said Neill, a dentist from Seaford and a representative to the International Game Fish Association. “That first one stayed deeper and we really couldn’t get a great look at it, much less pictures.”
But this whale shark, spotted last weekend, wanted a much closer encounter.
Neill and those fishing with him were shadowing Capt. Randy Butler on the Rebel, trying to improve on the technique of pitching live bait to feeding white marlin.
“We were getting tired of watching Randy have all these marlin jumping around behind his boat,” Neill said. “We just weren’t catching any. We had a hammerhead shark and ended up with a nice big-eye tuna.
“But this thing really made our day.”
When the whale shark came in to inspect the boat’s offerings, Neill was worried it might get tangled in the bait spread. So he turned away from the creature.
“It just followed us like a puppy dog,” said Neill, who said the whale shark was longer than his 35-foot boat. “It eventually got tired of playing with our teasers and swam away.”
Whale sharks are filter feeders that can grow up to 60 feet long.
“It wasn’t so much that we saw it, but that it seemed to come to see us. He got up close and personal with us. Capt. David Wright saw it too,” Neill said. “We’ve definitely been seeing lots more sharks this year, but this wasn’t expected.
“It was real special.”
Lee Tolliver, 757-222-5844, lee.tolliver@pilotonline.com
Twitter @LeeTolliver
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Posted to: Off the Hook Outdoors Sports
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