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“Butanding!” shouted our spotter in Tagalog for a whale shark or Rhincodon typus from atop his precarious perch on our boat’s observation pole as we motored across the calm waters of Donsol Bay in the Philippines. Across the water, other spotters echoed his call, pointing as they narrowed in on the area where they’d seen the shadow of the world’s largest, filter-feeding fish in the pale jade depths. Guests on the boats exploded into a frenzied scramble. Our captains jockeyed for position across the surface of the water, attempting to line up and drop us in the water within the legally safe distance from the sharks. Shouts of encouragement from our Butanding Interaction Officers (BIO) and shouts of glee and excitement from adults and children alike skittered across the water as guests dropped into the water like awkward waterborne paratroopers with none of the grace of Navy SEALS or other marine special forces operators. Frogmen, we were not. For the previous two days, only one boat achieved a successful whale shark interaction; my two cruises both struck out. The pursuit of the ocean’s largest pelagic fish was high on my bucket list. Before this, I saw (and fed) a juvenile shark in captivity in Hainan, China, rescued from fishermen’s nets, which only served to stoke the fires of interest to swimming or diving into the unknown with much larger ones in the wild. The night before the third and final day, on a lark, I walked to the edge of the water. There, I proffered the last of my margarita to Poseidon as an offering under a starlit sky to deliver a whale shark sighting. As the sun flung itself into clear blue skies on the final morning, tourists gathered just after breakfast and waited for our BIOs to escort us out to waiting boats in the warm bay waters. Then the chase began. Plunging into the ocean to chase sharks, even the non-human eating variety, is always a leap into the realm of the unknown. There are still myriad unsolved mysteries of the deep. Even the mere chance to interact with sharks that can reach up to eighteen meters in length built up quite the pre-swim excitement. Then came the calls from the spotters. It seemed Poseidon decided to accept my small offering. “Get ready!” our BIO said, a big grin spreading across his face. Slipping on my mask, I hit the record button on my GoPro, checked my fins, nodded to my travel companion, and leaped into the water in pursuit of the silent giant. As bubbles cleared from my mask after a less-than-graceful entry into the water, I swam after our guides, waiting for the whale shark to appear. At first, it was nothing more than a dark shadow deep in the water, a blurred outline that suggested something significant below me. As seconds ticked by, the outline of the enormous fish sharpened as it rose out of the depths as if drawn forward and upwards by an invisible, instinctual line. The brown skin and famous white spots dotted its flesh, marking each particular fish as unique, like a fingerprint. I ran my eye from its full flat mouth, across its small black eye wondering what it thought about me, to its large, angular dorsal fin stamped with more white dots and back toward its long, sweeping scythe-like tail. Kicking harder, I cleared myself from the tangle of guides and swimmers. My legs burned, and I heard my own heavy breathing through my snorkel, trying to keep up with the whale shark. Looking backward, the shark was a fantastic sight representing 60 million years of aquatic evolution as it silently cruised forward, siphoning plankton from the water. Being out-evolved for life in the water, I struggled to keep pace with the aquatic leviathan; the effortless swishes of its enormous tail left me in its marine dust, even at its leisurely 2.4 mph. Having only mere moments with the gentle giant added to the sense of the unknown of the enormous denizen of the deep as the dark of deeper water enveloped the shark on its way to a place only it knows.