Whale shark migrations
The biggest fish in the sea follows plankton blooms around the tropics — watch aggregations light up from Ningaloo to the Mexican Caribbean as the year turns.
See whale shark dive sites · zoom in and select a glow to open that coast on the dive map
The whale shark year, in real records
The biggest fish in the sea follows plankton blooms around the tropics — watch aggregations light up from Ningaloo to the Mexican Caribbean as the year turns. The map above animates 12,554 recorded observations of Rhincodon typus — CC0 and CC BY 4.0 records accessed through GBIF, binned by calendar month, peaking in September. Sightings are history, not a forecast: they show where people have actually seen this animal, which is strong planning context and never a guarantee.
Where the year peaks
The regions holding the most recorded whale shark sightings, and the months when each one runs hottest — computed from the same dataset the map animates.
- Western AustraliaJul–Oct6,083 sightingsdive sites here
- Eastern AustraliaDec–Jan1,879 sightingsdive sites here
- Galápagos & eastern PacificSep–Nov1,687 sightingsdive sites here
- Coral Triangle & Southeast AsiaSep–Feb816 sightingsdive sites here
- Maldives & Sri LankaDecember406 sightingsdive sites here