Oslob whale shark viewing — Attraction in Oslob

After serious reflection on my personal experience I would not go due to serious concerns on how this attraction effects the whale shark over time. The whale sharks are indeed an amazing creature, gentle giants, graceful and very beautiful for that I give the star of the show 5 stars, more as the whale shark is an irreplaceable creature on the endangered species list. Sadly this creature is made to perform, lured by small offerings of food, performing from early morning until around midday, 365 days a year. Performing to literally hundreds if not thousands of people every day. Yes I understand it supports valuable income to the local community, I completely understand this, however it's merely a circus show using wild creatures. I am glad I went on my own steam, I didn't pay the over priced tour companies, you can get there easily by bus, the actual swimming bit costs 500 php. I feel sad that I contributed to the circus show, you will understand if you go, look into the whale sharks eye and feel what they feel, at least I had time to to actually look deep into the eye, I said my thanks, and recognised a truly...

This experience made me cry. Absolutely the worst experience I've ever had regarding sighting animals (with a guided tour). The day started with a 4AM pickup (as discussed) to get to Oslob to go swimming with whale sharks. Once there, we were horrified to find out that this 'natural habitat' was merely a close to the shore attraction that kept multiple whale sharks caged and separated from the open sea with nets so tourists in groups of hundreds at a time can go swim near them. It's awful, unnatural, crowded and they leave you in line waiting for hours!! Bare in mind that, when part of a guided tour, you pay extra for this whole daytour after 6PM so this long waitingline is beneficial to the tour operator. The tour was supposed to include a 'professional briefing' before we left our hotel. This did not happen and the guide left us in the dark about many important details that could've prepaid us better for this visit and...

register online on facebook, it saves you sooo much time! you book a time slot and you turn up at that time and you have a priority number ticket! so much quicker than waiting at 3am. we turned up at 7:20 am when our slot was 8-9am as they say to get there early and we waited for about 40 mins or less and then was called! at that time there wasn’t many people in the queue waiting for walk ins anyways so you don’t need to go early.

when you’re in the water it’s chaos. it’s very wavy which is understandable we are in the sea but everyone trying to take pictures and videos swimming with the whales, getting kicked in the head because people kept trying to take pictures. not sure why you couldn’t do one video with it and then stay back and let everyone see the animals. it’s very chaotic, wasn’t great. we paid 1000 pesos for 2 of...