"Hey yall, watch this." (Man jumps from boat onto whale shark)

One of my friends linked to this video today of her dad on a fishing trip in the Gulf of Mexico this last month. A massive whale shark swam past their boat and one of the guys jumped out and started riding the thing. Twice. Crazy but I can't say it doesn't look like fun.

Do we need any more proof that alcohol makes you SToOpid?????
:shk:
Dumb SOB.

reply to post by AccessDenied

No, the man on the shark doesn't drink at all. He was as sober as can be.

Whale sharks are plankton eaters and pose little risk to humans. Still, would I do that? No, I don't think there'd be enough bourbon on the boat for me to attempt it.

A couple of years ago during Shark Week on Discovery (?), there was a film crew that came upon a whale carcass. They wanted to record the feeding habits of great whites and their euphoric actions after feeding.

One of the film crew actually climbed onto the floating whale carcass around all the frenzied great whites and recorded them eating away at the carcass. I couldn't believe it. One careless move is all it took to fall off the slippery blubber and into the feeding frenzy below.

Not for a billion, says I.

The guy in this video reminded me of that but at least he wasn't completely insane.

Oh and just to be sure: I know whale sharks are generally not harmful to humans. The video above of jumping onto a whale shark just reminded me of the much more dangerous attempt with the great whites.

[edit on 10/2/2009 by AshleyD]

HAHA amazing. I love it.

Doing that might cure me of my fear of large aquatic animals. I know those things are almost 100% not dangerous, but for some reason they still freak me out. Looks like it didn't mind much anyway. He came back for another one after all. I'm told whale sharks are quite intelligent.

Great vid!

Originally posted by dbates
reply to post by AccessDenied

 

No, the man on the shark doesn't drink at all. He was as sober as can be.

I don't even know how to respond to that.
I guess crazy is as crazy does...or he was hoping to star in a new " Deathwish" movie.

reply to post by AccessDenied


Hey AD!

The creature he rode is almost entirely harmless to humans. They are filter feeders, so they mostly only feed on plankton. The worst that fish could have done to that man is gum him.

Originally posted by SantaClaus
reply to post by AccessDenied

 

Hey AD!

The creature he rode is almost entirely harmless to humans. They are filter feeders, so they mostly only feed on plankton. The worst that fish could have done to that man is gum him.

It's the sheer size of it...and it's the Ocean! *shivers

The one thing that would probably stop me from doing that is that you never know what kind of reaction you are going to get from an animal like that when you lay hands on it. And especially clamping down on its dorsal fin the way he did. What if that thing would have freaked out and bolted off? That would have probably thrown him off in the water, and put him right in line to get pummeled by a panicked tail fin as it sped away. That could spell instant death with something that big. Not too smart imo.

Do I detect a little tinge of yellow in the water?

No way, no how!

Peace

I got near one during a scuba exercise. The instructor said most of them are just very playfully curious and they are incapable of rapid movement due to their "lo-cal" diet. They are mostly sedate and don't have much to fear in the ocean, so they have no real "fight or flight" reaction.

I went to the Wiki article and it said they are very often used to acclimate divers to a large animal in the water.

Other than annoying it, I doubt he did anything too ignorant.