Keith Jones, Adventures with Wild Animals
Close animal encounters
Rub noses with a gray whale,  Pet a Giant Panda BearSnorkel with a shark!

 

 

Whale Shark snorkel adventure
We guarantee that you will have the opportunity to swim or snorkel with a whale shark
Whale Shark information:

Phylum: Chordata
subphylum: vertebrata
Class: Chondrichthyes
Subclass: Elasmobranchii (sharks and rays)
Order: Selachii (sharks)
Suborder: Galeoidei (typical sharks)
Family: Rhincodontidae     (whale shark)
Genus: Rhincodon
Species: typus

They are a member of the shark family and as such have no "real" bones, but only cartilage.These fish are live bearers. The eggs develop and hatch in the uterus. Several hundred babies are born live.

Length up to 40 or 50 feet.
Weight up to 20 tons.

Food- - They are plankton filter feeders. They do not eat large fish or other large animals.  They swim  through the water at about 2 to 3 knots constantly filtering plankton, fish eggs, shrimp and small sardine-like fish from the water.

Do whale sharks have teeth? You may read that they don’t have teeth. They filter plankton from the water using gill rakers. But they do in fact have teeth. The teeth are extremely small, have moved to the inside of the sharks mouth and probably don’t have much of a practical function.

Baja Jones Adventures, the only tour operator anywhere in the world today who offers a money back guarantee that you will experience an encounter with one or more whale sharks.  Every week someone contacts us and tells of an expensive and frustrating trip to Roatan or to Belize, where they went to swim with whale sharks, but never even saw one.

Click here for the latest whale shark trip photos

Join us for an exciting trip to experience the wonder of swimming with the worlds largest shark.   Our whale shark trips are scheduled to two different locations in Mexico this year. 

The first location is in the Philippine Islands in the bay of the small village of Donsol.  Keith rates Donsol as the #1 location anywhere in the world for whale sharks.  Join him for an exciting water oriented vacation trip.

The second whale shark location is Holbox Island off the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula near Cancun and Cozumel.  Just 24 miles long and 1 1/2 miles wide this is a tropical island fantasy.  The island has terrific snorkeling, beautiful white sand beaches and not a single car to pollute the ambience.

The third whale shark trip location is to the Sea of Cortez (Gulf of California), Baja, Mexico.  We will snorkel with whale sharks in the warm water surrounded by rugged mountains and desert islands.  A remote and relatively undeveloped location.  Yet, just a quick 8 hour drive time from the border at San Diego. 

There are only a few locations in the world where Whale Sharks are known to return reliably each year.  We travel regularly to 3 of the top 4 locations.  The 4th location is in Australia, the Great Barrier Reef.

 whaleshark surface bay of la.jpg (23700 bytes)
Click here for information about our Philippine Islands whale shark tour
Click here for more info about Holbox Island whale sharks
Click here for more info about Bahia de Los Angeles whale sharks

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Philippine schedule:
2008 trip dates
January 11 - 19 - - $1,995 P/P - - 9 day vacation tour
March 27 - April 2 - -$1,995 P/P - - 9 day vacation tour
May 7 - 15 - - $1,995 - - 9 day vacation tour

Holbox Island 2007
Contact us for day tours or for our one remaining scheduled tour July 28 to August 1, $1,495 per person

Sea of Cortez, Bahia de Los Angeles
, Baja Peninsula,  this trip can take place anytime in August or early September.  This year no scheduled tour, but we will do a custom tour for a party of 4 or more.  price is $1,695 per person.
whale shark bay of la.jpg (17889 bytes)

whaleshark half body.jpg (8466 bytes)
Holbox Island, near Cozumel, Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico

This trip is guaranteed to be one you will never forget.  Sunny white sand beaches, tall palm trees swaying in the afternoon breeze, and wonderfully colored marine life will be memories you carry home with you.  Each morning we'll leave the dock and go in search of our "target" animal, the whale sharks.

If you are really interested in this trip or in whale sharks, email us and request our free CD with video clips

Donsol, the Philippine Islands:
Keith rates this trip as the best whale shark trip on our schedule.  Great white sand beaches.  Snorkel with whale sharks just a short boat ride from the dock.  Friendly people and a new tourist industry combine to make this a terrific vacation.  After snorkeling with the whale sharks we then move on to a great area for reef snorkeling and diving.  Scuba or snorkel you will love the area around Boracay Beach. 

Click here to email us and to sign up for one of these exciting trips. Ask for our FREE CD with video clips..
With the increased interest by tourists, some governments have begun regulating access to or have drafted guidelines for correct observation. At the Ningaloo Reef in Australia there is now a minimum 3 meter distance that must be maintained by divers and snorkelers. In the Phillipines no touching of the whale sharks is allowed.  At Baja Jones we believe that wildlife tourism is always preferable to hunting the animal. There are certainly times and cases where tourism alters the behavior of wild animals. That by itself is not necessarily harmful to the individual animals nor to the species. The life cycle of Whale sharks is an unknown at this point in time. Very little is known about them. We do know that they migrate, following the seasons of the ocean as plankton, fish spawing and other food sources increases in various areas of the world. There is some fear that increased viewing pressure by tourists may cause the animals to move to other locations. This is a species that until recently was largely ignored by the scientific community. Little research has been carried out. With the recent increase in interaction between whale sharks and dive or snorkel tourists, especially in Australia, scientists have begun to find that there is grant money available to allow them to study the whale sharks in greater detail. Whale sharks are considered a threatened species. In some areas of the world they are protected from fishing, but in many other locations they are still hunted. Whale shark meat is eaten throughout Asia. The meat is the most expensive of the all the sharks. Shark fins from a whale shark are said to fetch as much as $400 or $500 in Taiwan.
Contact information:

Baja Jones Adventures

USA phone - - - - - -  909-923-8933 10:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M. Pacific time zone

Email: keith@greywhale.com

Mail to:1707 E. Oak Hill Court, Ontario, California,USA 91761

Ca. Registered seller of travel #2055660-50

Main gray whale watching page   More whale shark info   Blue whales of Loreto   Gray whales of Baja   Humpbacks of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico  2004 & 2005 trip schedule & rates   Narwhals of Baffin Island, Canada   Right Whales of Patagonia    Penguins of Peninsula Valdez   Cave Paintings of Mexico   about Baja Jones     contact info for Baja Jones   whale sharks worldwide   Holbox Island   Sea of Cortez, Bahia de Los Angeles whale sharks   Donsol, the Phillippine Islands whale sharks  whale shark trip photos 2005