Carisa Lee

Re­porter

Carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

Em­ploy­ees and pa­trons at the Peake Yacht Ser­vices Ma­ri­na in Ch­aguara­mas around 8:15 yes­ter­day morn­ing re­ceived a spe­cial vis­it from the world’s biggest fish, the Whale Shark.

“I watch in the wa­ter, I see this big fin ... it’s amaz­ing be­cause the last 30 years I’ve been work­ing here, I’ve nev­er seen a whale,” Peake Yacht Ser­vices em­ploy­ee Christo­pher Al­lard said.

An­oth­er em­ploy­ee, Leslieann Sam­bra­no, said she was clean­ing the grill when she heard a splash­ing sound in the wa­ter be­hind her.

“When I turned around, I saw a big, big, big whale. I was like I have to cap­ture this mo­ment and I won’t lie, it was one of the great­est mo­ments in the short space of time I’m liv­ing on earth,” she said.

En­vi­ron­men­tal­ist and founder of the El So­cor­ro Cen­tre for Wildlife Con­ser­va­tion (ECWC), Ri­car­do Meade, com­mend­ed those present for their han­dling of the sit­u­a­tion.

“Ku­dos to the peo­ple who stood there and took the videos and didn’t think them­selves and want­i­ng them self­ie mo­ments the video was just ap­pro­pri­ate and the re­sponse was cor­rect to have it post­ed and sent to cer­tain peo­ple around who may have of­fered opin­ion and as well as help to the an­i­mal,” he ex­plained.

He de­scribed the Whale Shark as the largest species of fish in the world. He said, de­spite its size, it is a gen­tle, slow-mov­ing fil­ter feed­er that eats tiny plank­ton and small fish. Ac­cord­ing to the ex­pert, Whale sharks live in warm trop­i­cal oceans and grow over 40 feet long.