The largest fish, present at Darwin as mature females rather than the juveniles seen elsewhere.
The Darwin aggregation is unusual and is the reason the Galapagos appears in the literature on this species at all. The animals recorded there are overwhelmingly large females, most over 10 m, and most appearing to be pregnant. This is different from every other well-known whale shark aggregation, which are dominated by small juvenile males feeding at the surface.
What the females are doing there is not settled. The working explanation is that they are passing along a deep-water route rather than feeding, which fits the observation that they are usually seen swimming through rather than lingering, and that surface feeding is rarely recorded at Darwin.
The season runs roughly June to November, coinciding with the cooler, more productive water of the Humboldt influence.
Encounters are brief and the animals are moving. Divers positioned in open water off the point, rather than on the reef, see them for longer. Chasing is ineffective and is prohibited under Galapagos National Park rules.
Ratings are per location: 1 means found on most dives that look for it, 5 means a handful of records. Where enough dives have been logged the figure is calculated from them; otherwise it is an editorial estimate, and says so. We publish habitat and destination, not the dive site.