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6 Animal Encounters to Add to Your Bucket List

These animal encounters topped the list for PADI Club members. Here's where to have them
By Brooke Morton | Published On December 21, 2024
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6 Animal Encounters to Add to Your Bucket List

A hammerhead shark rushes past a diver at a shallow site in Bimini, Bahamas.

A hammerhead shark rushes past a diver at a shallow site in Bimini, Bahamas.

Tobias Friedrich

The results are in—a recent poll by Scuba Diving magazine asked PADI Club members: “Which marine animals are at the top of your diving bucket list?” The results were overwhelmingly skewed toward the giants of the ocean, with big animals scoring five of the top six spots.

Regardless of size, there’s perhaps no bigger thrill than planning a trip specifically to encounter that one creature you’re simply dying to see. Read on to learn more about some of the most sought-after marine animals and the environments where they’re sure to be found.

Related Reading: Best Destinations to Dive With Big Animals

A pair of whale sharks zooms past a snorkeler in the Caribbean waters of Isla Mujeres, Mexico.

A pair of whale sharks zooms past a snorkeler in the Caribbean waters of Isla Mujeres, Mexico.

Jason Sintek

1. Whale Sharks

Islamujeres, Mexico

On any given day in summer, between 50 and 100 whale sharks can be found off Isla Mujeres. These massive animals, like cows in a field of grass, spread out as they feed on plankton—which is, of course, the main reason they come to these Caribbean waters roughly 8 miles off Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. In the water, snorkelers won’t see more than one or two at a time.

But, over the course of a day, they may lay eyes on nine or 10.

Every tour operator has a slightly different approach, but most tend to drop swimmers in the water slightly ahead of the whale shark. The intent: Snorkelers swim as long as they can, keeping pace with the fish for a minute or several before watching them pass.

“You cannot fully imagine how big they actually are until you are in the water with them,” says Emily Askew, manager of Pocna Dive Center, based on island.

Taking in their enormity from afar is breathtaking, but seeing them up close highlights their distinct characteristics. “I love when I can see the structure of their skin and the patterns,” says Askew.

Every whale shark has its own unique spot pattern, much like a human’s fingerprint. To really witness this detail, snorkelers need only be a few feet away from these filter-feasters. “Water makes everything bigger anyway, so even 6 feet away, you can really see it,” she says.

When to Go Season lasts May through the middle of September, with July and August drawing in the biggest number of whale sharks.

Contact Pocna Dive Center (pocnadivecenter.com)

Did You Know

Whale sharks have 300 rows of teeth. They feed on plankton and can grow larger than 40 feet long.

An oceanic manta ray hovers above the reef in Raja Ampat, Indonesia, a hotspot for these massive animals.

An oceanic manta ray hovers above the reef in Raja Ampat, Indonesia, a hotspot for these massive animals.

Stephen Wong

2. Manta Rays

Rajaampat, Indonesia

The word most used to describe mantas: alien. Start with their size, which feels otherworldly. Oceanic mantas dwarf us, with a wingspan of up to 29 feet, and reef mantas stretch an impressive 18 feet.

Then there’s the shape—sleek and angular, save for the cephalic fins that sprout from their head like antennae, used to funnel plankton into their mouth.

Both oceanic and reef mantas live year-round in the Raja Ampat Islands of Indonesia. For divers, this means nearly guaranteed encounters, especially at known hotspots, including Manta Ridge and Manta Sandy, both in the heart of Raja Ampat. There, as many as 25 mantas can be seen at a time, sometimes flying in a trainlike mating ritual. “They’re the most elegant animals, moving with the least amount of effort, like a butterfly,” says Andrea Bensi, owner of the Raja Ampat Aggressor liveaboard.

Mantas are powerful, yet elegant; shy, yet undeniably curious. Provided divers stay calm and, when at the cleaning stations, still and kneeling in the sand, mantas will approach more closely than one might expect. “They pass 1 inch from your face,” says Bensi. “Sometimes they even bump into your camera.”

But what is perhaps most startling is how much their presence can be sensed. “You can feel the water moving between you and the manta,” says Bensi.

Best of all, so long as divers create a safe space for the mantas and refrain from chasing or lunging toward them, the encounters go on for 20, sometimes 30 minutes.

When to Go Year-round. Note, however, that July and August can bring slightly rough seas. Raja Ampat Aggressor relocates to the Derawan Islands during this time period.

Operator Aggressor Adventures (aggressor.com)

Did You Know

The manta’s underside is a unique identifier. It can range from nearly all black to nearly all white, but most are mainly white with black and gray spots. In Raja Ampat, melanism (a rare trait referring to black coloring on the animal’s underside) is present in 40 percent of the manta population.

Related Reading: Do Dive Lights Harm Manta Rays?

A humpback mother and its calf come up to the surface for air in the deep blue waters of Tahiti.

A humpback mother and its calf come up to the surface for air in the deep blue waters of Tahiti.

Tobias Friedrich

3. Humpback Whales

Tahiti, French Polynesia

Four different encounters with humpback whales can be experienced in the wild, and all four can be had off the island of Tahiti.

The first is witnessed from the boat, as the whale leaps out of the water.

“It’s an incredible show,” says Maylis Esquevin, manager with Top Dive, which offers guided tours dedicated to humpback whales. “This thing the size of a bus jumps entirely out of the water,” she says.

The second encounter is the rarest: an in-water encounter with a male.

Only the males sing, serenading the females sometimes as long as 30 minutes with one breath of air. If a group doesn’t connect with the whale as it fills its lungs, it’s a long time waiting for another chance.

Third up is what most divers want to see: mama and baby together. Luckily, this is also the most common sighting. Because calves have a lung capacity that allows them to stay underwater no more than three to 10 minutes, they’re constantly returning to the surface. “The calf is usually curious, like a puppy, and will come near the snorkelers,” says Esquevin.

Self-awareness in the water is key, not only for safety but also to ensure optimal encounters for both snorkeler and whale.

The last type of encounter is also the most dangerous: one female with several males competing to mate with her. “When males fight, they don’t care if you are in the way,” says Esquevin. “You can have three buses jumping on each other and clapping.”

For this reason, snorkelers don’t enter but watch from the boat. Still, it’s a display that fully showcases the animal’s power and magnificence.

When to Go September and October provide the best chances for sightings. Try to book at least five days on the water.

Operator Top Dive (topdive.com)

Did You Know

Males in the same breeding area sing the same mating song. If one changes the song slightly, the others, over time, typically copy that new song.

A great hammerhead shark circles a diver on a shallow dive off Bimini in the Bahamas.

A great hammerhead shark circles a diver on a shallow dive off Bimini in the Bahamas.

Felipe Barrio

4. Great Hammerhead Sharks

Bimini, Bahamas

The provisioning site off the Bahamian island of Bimini is such a sure thing when it comes to nearshore great hammerhead encounters that it’s hard to believe the animals are wild. The conditions couldn’t be more ideal: The site’s max depth is 20 feet, and it’s reachable via a boat ride faster than it takes most divers to don their gear.

Of course, the animals are 100 percent wild, and they’re there thanks to the efforts and curiosity of the members of Bimini’s research-centered Shark Lab. The marine biologists continually saw what they thought was one great hammerhead arcing through the clear waters of the island’s harbor. Wanting to know more, they started creating a fish blood scent trail just south of the harbor’s mouth, allowing the north-flowing current to do its work. They immediately found that it wasn’t one hammer but several.

That was back in 2010, and today, the dive site is still going strong. Local operators, such as Neal Watson’s Bimini Scuba Center, are fully tuned in to the animals present each season. In fact, no divemaster can become a handler with Neal Watson’s until they first learn to identify the 14 or so animals that show up every year by their markings and signature moves.

No two hammerheads approach the bait in the same way. “Some speed up before they take the bait,” says Watson, who has been offering this experience commercially since it began. “Some make a lot of passes before they take the bait. Some come in high, and some come in low. They all do their one thing and are consistent with that one thing.”

When to Go The hammerheads show up November to April.

Operator Neal Watson’s Bimini Scuba Center (biminiscubacenter.com)

Did You Know

Many of Bimini’s hammers have been tagged, with researchers tracking their travels to Charleston, South Carolina; Tampa Bay, Florida; and farther north along the East Coast.

Related Reading: Saving Indonesia's Endangered Sharks

Manatees float gently in the warm, protected waters of Three Sisters Springs in Crystal River, Florida.

Manatees float gently in the warm, protected waters of Three Sisters Springs in Crystal River, Florida.

David Fleetham

5. Manatees

Crystal River, Florida

Stay calm and respectful in the water, and there’s no telling how much and how closely the West Indian manatees of Crystal River, Florida, will interact with snorkeling guests.

“The babies are always the showstoppers,” says Mike Strmiska, a lead captain with American Pro Diving Center, which offers guided snorkel tours with the area’s manatees.

He recounts a time when a manatee swam up behind the group, settling onto the back of a guest and falling asleep. This went on for several minutes. “The guy was frozen like a statue, not knowing what to do,” he says with a chuckle. “This is why people like manatees so much—they just do funny stuff.”

The animal is undeniably curious, seemingly drawn to humans. “They come right up to people, which is different from most animals in the wild,” says Strmiska.

Federal law protects these animals, and the Crystal River area, roughly 65 miles north of Tampa on the Gulf Coast, sees volunteers regularly helping enforce the restrictions. It’s one of the reasons the animals flock to the area. The bigger reason is the springs, which pump out 72-degree fresh water year-round. Come winter, this water is considerably warmer than the Gulf, which can dip to the 50s after a cold snap.

The result: manatees packing themselves into the springs of the greater King’s Bay area, numbering 800 to 1,000. This time of year, encounters are guaranteed.

In summer, manatees still graze locally, but aren’t clustered together in spots like Three Sisters Springs. Instead, they spread out.

Still, they’re abundant. “I can’t tell you the last time we went out and didn’t see them,” says Strmiska.

When to Go Year-round, but December to March brings the coldest weather and most reliable sightings.

Operator American Pro Diving Center (americanprodiving.com)

Did You Know

Manatees rely on the tiny hairs—every one of their hairs is a tactile hair—on their body to detect disturbances in the waters around them.

An adult male leafy sea dragon swims over seagrass in South Australia.

An adult male leafy sea dragon swims over seagrass in South Australia.

Alex Mustard

6. Leafy Sea Dragons

Rapid Bay, South Australia

What surprises most divers who see the leafy sea dragons of Rapid Bay Jetty in South Australia is their size. “People think it’s no bigger than half an inch,” says Aaron Tero, a divemaster with Diving Adelaide, which offers guided tours to this 25-foot-deep shore dive site where countless leafies reside.

In reality, these fish that are related to seahorses grow to an average of 11 inches long and can even reach 20 inches. But that still doesn’t make them easy to find among the seagrass. “Most of the time, when I point one out, people will stare directly at it and nod, but I can tell they haven’t seen it,” he says.

Tero knows to wait. He’ll point again, or perhaps the animal will move ever so slightly, and then the diver’s eyes light up in recognition. “You can see in their face that they’re saying, ‘Holy crap,’” he says.

That’s because this animal is so strange that it’s hard to fully appreciate until it’s vibrating right before one’s mask.

Other than its cousin, the weedy sea dragon, “There’s nothing else like it,” Tero says.

The leafy sea dragon has adapted to sprout about a dozen fleshy appendages to help avoid detection. It’s evolution at its finest, outsmarting prey as well as the eyes of most first-timers on the hunt.

It pays to have a guide. For divers willing to devote two days, it might be worth requesting a different divemaster on each day to maximize the spotting abilities. Every group leader has their own techniques, as well as preference about whether to go for one or two long encounters or try for a big number.

“The most I have seen on one dive is six,” says Tero. But, he adds, “there’s not much difference in behavior” among the animals. Divers might see slight variations in size or color, but for the most part, what you’ll witness is a floaty movement driven by the undulation of its tiny dorsal fin. The animal is incredibly delicate, and it might be carried a bit by the current if there is one. The best strategy for divers is to practice perfect buoyancy, and otherwise, stay still.

“It just mesmerizes me,” says Tero. “When you see the leafy, you’re completely there. You don’t think of anything else.”

When to Go These animals are present at Rapid Bay Jetty year-round, but June to August sees weather and water that can be windy and choppy. September to November brings good conditions and falls before the peak summer season when many local divers come to the area.

Operator Diving Adelaide (divingadelaide.com.au)

Did You Know

Juvenile sea dragons are clear, not yellow-brown, in color. They begin life at the size of a pinky nail.