A group of tourists led by Efrén Méndez Ávalos, a tour guide from San Agustinillo, Santa María Tonameca, had the good fortune to see a whale shark swimming alongside their boat on Wednesday.
The manager of Pacífico Mágico Tours shared on Facebok the sighting of the single, 2.5-meter-long whale, which took place off the beaches of Ventanilla and Mermegita.
Méndez told the local news outlet Imagen_Oaxaca that the specimen swam along his tour boat for several minutes, as if posing for pictures and video.
While not an uncommon sighting off the Oaxaca coast, large numbers of whale sharks are part of the maritime landscape of the Gulf of California and the Mexican Caribbean. Seasonal sightings can be more frequent between the months of May and September, but strays like the one witnessed yesterday in Ventanilla are not out of the ordinary.
With reports from El Piñero
