Video of a man riding on endangered whale shark leaves netizens divided | Watch

A footage of a swimmer leaping onboard a gigantic Whale Shark for a sail across the Red Sea has stunned the internet. Shared on Twitter by a user named Abdullah-Al-Alouni, the 45 seconds clip with over 15k views shows a Saudi man, identified by the Gulf media as Abu Badi, jumping atop an endangered acrobatic Whale Shark from a small boat after he spots the mammal swimming in the vicinity. The man can be seen sailing across the vast blue sea in the clip, originally shared on Snapchat. While some users expressed astonishment at the man’s “courage” to hitch a ride on the mammoth fish, several others criticized him for sitting on an “endangered species”. 

In the video, a human’s voice can be heard speaking in Arabic which roughly translates to a person warning the man about the Whale Shark. “Careful, it can consume you,” the person reportedly said. However, according to marine experts, Whale Sharks are friendly creatures towards humans. In fact, the fish diets on planktons. However, scientists and marine conservationists forbid humans from interacting with the rare fish as they are on the brink of extinction. “The acrobat whale - is an endangered species of shark. A user informed in the comments, the fish’s “average length is 13 meters while its weight is 21 tons. It is one of the most common types of fish spread in the Red Sea, especially near the Saudi coast. This shark does not pose any danger to humans, and no deaths or attacks on humans have been recorded.”

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'Severely declining' in Red Sea

The clip has earned a backlash as the experts at International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) list Whale Shark’s population in the Red Sea hot spot as “severely declining”. It mentions a population dip of 50 per cent for the past three generations, meaning, the species remain only two classifications away from extinction, as per the reports. The area in the Red Sea where Whale Sharks are spotted also witnesses conservation efforts by several organizations worldwide. In fact, as per the study in journal PLOS ONE, many of these whale sharks return in Red Sea years after years and their critical sustenance requires “nil human intrusions”. 

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