{"id":583030,"date":"2026-04-03T14:20:22","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T14:20:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/583030\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T14:20:22","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T14:20:22","slug":"diver-playing-with-little-fish-nearly-misses-the-worlds-largest-shark-behind-him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/583030\/","title":{"rendered":"Diver Playing With Little Fish Nearly Misses The World\u2019s Largest Shark Behind Him"},"content":{"rendered":"

The ocean is full of surprises. But some are much bigger than others.<\/p>\n

Last year, while exploring the waters off of Indonesia, a scuba diver with the company Manta Dive Gili Trawangan<\/a> was met by a curious remora fish. Those sleek little swimmers are often seen traveling alongside sharks, but to the diver, this one appeared to be alone.<\/p>\n

He was wrong.<\/p>\n

As the diver interacted with the remora, he failed to notice the darkening shadow of a massive animal approaching him from behind:<\/p>\n

Turns out, the world\u2019s largest fish<\/a> \u2014 a whale shark\u2014 was swimming in the water nearby. She passed directly through where the diver, the remora and the camera operator had been lingering.<\/p>\n

An extended cut of the video above shows her massive size as she passed peacefully by.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, despite their imposing size of around 40 feet in length, whale sharks pose no threat to people. Their diet consists of small organisms, such as plankton and shrimp.<\/p>\n

An inadvertent bump from a whale shark could be painful, but the divers that day had just enough time to get out of the way.<\/p>\n

\"AGetty Images\/Jason Edwards<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cRespecting marine life is always our top priority,\u201d Manta Dive Gili Trawangan wrote<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s so important to admire from a distance.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Shark<\/a>Shark Swims Up To Diver For a Cuddle Every Time She Sees HimThis has been going on for 7 years!<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The ocean is full of surprises. But some are much bigger than others. Last year, while exploring the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":583031,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[64,63,341,8168,128,1042,156,20811,339,73787,338],"class_list":{"0":"post-583030","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-daily-dodo","11":"tag-fish","12":"tag-science","13":"tag-sharks","14":"tag-standard","15":"tag-stephen-messenger","16":"tag-the-dodo","17":"tag-whale-sharks","18":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=583030"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583030\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/583031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=583030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=583030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=583030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}