A shocking video of a man jumping onto a whale shark in an attempt to ride it is doing the rounds on the internet.?The video is reportedly from the Red Sea where the stuntman, named locally as Zaki Al-sabahy, attempted to ride the whale shark by clinging onto its dorsal fin.?
He was filmed sitting on the bow of a yacht as he eyed the sharks swimming close to the port city of Yanbu, Saudi Arabia.
The video starts with men on a yacht, eyeing the whale sharks in front of them. When the yacht approaches the whales, Al-sabahy jumps on one of them and the person recording the video sounds elated. This goes on for a while as the camera takes shots of Al-sabahy from different angles. Reportedly Al-sabahy was with two friends who filmed him and uploaded the footage online. One of the men is heard shouting, ¡°Careful, it can swallow you.¡±?
Al-sabahy, after leaping on the whale¡¯s back gripped the animal¡¯s dorsal fin and slung his legs around its midriff.
The huge whale sharks are a rare sight in the Red Sea and while some people were critical of the act others seemed impressed by the man¡¯s stunt. He was called ¡®a brave man¡¯ with others pointing out that his behaviour was ¡®reckless¡¯.
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Saudi authorities have reportedly made no comment on the incident yet.?
The whale shark is the world's largest fish and is listed as 'endangered' on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List due to the impacts of fisheries, by-catch losses and vessel strikes, along with the animal's long lifespan and late maturation.
Even though they are huge they are not known to be dangerous.?
Not too long ago, another?video showed a bunch of fishermen from India releasing an endangered whale shark back into the sea after it got trapped.
In the video, the group of men on a fishing vessel were seen struggling while trying to get the whale shark under control before actually releasing it. Many of them got hit by the shark¡¯s tail more than once.?
Not giving up, the men eventually managed to release the shark back into the sea.?The fishermen involved were reportedly from the Puthiyappa fishing harbour in Kozhikode, Kerala.
These are just two very different scenarios showing how an endangered species was treated.?
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