Marine Marvel: Unlikely Duo Spotted Off Florida Coast

DESTIN, FL — A routine dive off the coast of Florida's panhandle became a once-in-a-lifetime experience when an unlikely duo was spotted in the deep by a team of coastal resource workers.

Alex Fogg, a Coastal Resource Manager for Visit Destin-Fort Walton Beach, was working to map and monitor artificial reefs in the Gulf of Mexico on Sunday when he and his teammates spotted a manta ray in the water.

The divers then came face-to-face with a whale shark, a filter feeder and gentle giant of the deep that eats small shrimp, fish and plankton.

Encountering a whale shark, an endangered species, is exceedingly uncommon in the Destin area. Fogg said only one to two reports of whale shark sightings are made in the area each year.

In footage of the dive shared with Patch, Fogg can be heard exclaiming "Oh my god!" as the manta ray rises through the water and passes over the shark's back.

"It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience being able to see both at the same time," he said.

Because manta rays and whale sharks are filter feeders, neither is a threat to the other, Fogg said. Still, neither is known to seek out the company of the other.

The biologist suggests rays and sharks prefer different oceanographic features, which could explain why they aren't often spotted in tandem. In short, he said, "I don’t have a good answer as to why you don’t normally see them together."

His best guess as to what brought the ray and the shark to Destin is that they were on migratory paths, came across the reef and "decided to hang out for a little bit."

As it turns out, Sunday was not the whale shark's first time being caught on camera.

Whale sharks have spotted patterns on their backs and side bodies, which are as unique to the sharks as finger prints are to humans, Fogg said.

Fogg uploaded a photo of the wayward shark to WhaleShark.org, a website that lets professional and amateur diver-photographers report whale shark sightings and track shark migration.

The website was able to identify the shark by its pattern and trace it to its previous sighting, which was in September 2017 off the coast of Mexico.

Although it's doubtful the shark and manta ray have an unlikely friendship, Fogg said he still left the experience feeling grateful for having seen such a rare sight.

"It's a relatively shallow reef, so we were able to spend a lot of time there," he said. "A lot of people got to see the shark."