Whale Shark spotted of Australia's Gold Coast - wow !

IT may be huge, but there is nothing menacing about this monster shark.

The 6m whale shark was spotted at the Palm Beach reef on Sunday, the first time in more than 30 years one of the gentle giants has been photographed off the Gold Coast.

Local fishermen Mark Pease and James Bowden were about to weigh anchor and head home when the shark surfaced about 10am.

"He's just came up and started nuzzling on the burley bucket and rubbing against the boat," said Mr Bowden.

As the shark played with the boat, Mr Bowden used his underwater camera to capture the moment.

"He was quite friendly, he just wanted to hang around and have a look at us and we obviously had a good look at him.

"I was holding my camera in the water and I've turned my camera around when he swum past and his tail has flicked me.

"He was very touchable and hung around for about half an hour."

They may be the largest fish species in the world, but whale sharks eat only phytoplankton, macro-algae, plankton, krill and small nektonic life, such as small squid or vertebrates.

"Something so big you expect to be quite aggressive but it stayed so calm the whole time," said Mr Bowden.

The shark brought some good luck with it, helping the men land a nice-sized cobia.

"He had some cobia hanging around that we caught pretty easily, so he lost a friend," said Mr Pease.

Mr Bowden said he felt lucky to have seen 'such an amazing creature'.

"It was just nice to see, he was very friendly and wasn't after anything. Because they are so rare some people pay a lot of money and travel to different parts of the world to see them, so to have him hang around with us for ages was amazing," he said.

Whale sharks are normally found in warm tropical waters and are most common in the Ningaloo Marine Park on the Western Australian northwest coast but have been sighted as far south as Eden on the NSW south coast.

In the early 1960s, two fisherman are believed to have spotted the first whale shark in southeast Queensland waters as they fished in a dingy off Deception Bay.

A few years later an 11.6m whale shark was caught in shark nets off a Gold Coast beach.

It was freed and towed in to the Broadwater where it was photographed, by the Queensland Government's senior marine biologist Ern Grant, before being towed back out to sea and released.

"When the boat rang to say they've brought it to shore for me to see I got in my car and raced down there ASAP," said Mr Grant when contacted by The Bulletin yesterday.

"It is the only whale shark I saw on the Coast, rare is right."

In the 1970s, famous underwater photographer Ben Cropp dived with a whale shark off the Coast. Gold Coast Bulletin fishing expert Paul Burt said Mr Pease and Mr Bowden were 'extremely lucky' to encounter such a rare shark off the Coast.

"I would have loved to be in their shoes," he said.

"I've dived with them up in New Guinea but I have never seen or heard of one on the Coast.

"They are an amazing sight. They're huge and I tell you what, when you see them when you're not expecting to, they scare the absolute bejeebers out of you."

Photos and video of this at http://www.goldcoast.com.au/article/2009/01/21/41241_gold-coast-lead-story.html

Contributed by Tim Hochgrebe added 2009-01-22