I think you ought to know that I did an amazing thing three days ago: I swam with a 30 foot long fish. It was a Whale Shark, the largest species of fish in the world. It was congregating as part of a biological orgy cued by the moon that occurs every full moon in March-June in certain spots along the barrier reef aff Belize. This orgy is a matter of mutton and ? snapper sex: millions of them congregate to release their eggs and sperm in places that offer good dispersal (major gaps in the barrier reef). The only successful strategy for these species is to release so many eggs in one place as to overwhelm any possible congregation of predators, such as filter feeding Whale Sharks, dolphins, and small feeder fishes (whales are not common around here for some reason).
Finding these orgies is a crapshoot made only slightly less chancy by knowing the tides and currents (great Creole captains took care of this), going on the full moon (check), and following terns and gulls. We found two of these orgies all day- and we were considered very lucky. At one I got about 2 or 3 minutes of swimming above thousands of snapper and one large whale shark roughly 25 feet away. The sharks here are being chased a bit too much and this one immediately started to descend to distant depths in the species' characteristic slow nonchalant way. It seems they have no natural predators.
At the other orgy I swam with a bottle nose dolphin which was enjoying the buffet. It was a male and he actually approached me to within 20 feet.
That day I also swam with two other species of harmless sharks at a nearby reef- a nurse shark and a reef shark. I must go to dinner but I will finish this later. I'm off to Hopkins tomorrow for three or four days or relaxation and snorkeling.