Guide · Research

Is swimming with whale sharks ethical at Oslob?

Is swimming with whale sharks ethical when the sharks come because they are fed? Researchers have studied the Oslob feeding for years. Here is what they found, both the risks and the benefits.

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Editorial team, oslobwhalesharkwatching.comUpdated October 22, 2026Reading time 6 min29 sources

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What the research says

01Why they come: Boatmen hand-feed them krill and shrimp every morning.¹ ²
02Before 2011: Sightings were sporadic; daily sightings began with the feeding.³
03Behaviour: Sharks learn the site and avoid touches and boats less.⁴ ⁵
04Residency: Nine sharks became year-round residents.⁶
05Weighed against: Tourism income in a remote community.⁷

Why the whale sharks come to Tan-awan

The whale sharks at Oslob are fed. In a marked area 50 to 100 m off the village of Tan-awan, feeders in one-man paddleboats hand them krill from 06.00 to 13.00 every day.¹ A second study describes the food as mainly sergestid shrimp, known locally as uyap, given at up to 150 kg a day depending on shark and tourist numbers.² Only members of the local fishermen's association, TOWSFA, are allowed to do the feeding.²

This is what makes Oslob different. Nearly all whale shark tourism elsewhere relies on chance sightings of animals that are not fed.⁸ One of the tour listings on GetYourGuide says it plainly: the whale sharks are fed. A Palawan listing, by contrast, notes that its sightings are not guaranteed because the sharks there are in their natural habitat and are not fed.

Before the feeding began, whale sharks were sighted only sporadically off Oslob; predictable daily sightings of large numbers have only occurred since provisioning started in 2011.³ Every honest answer to whether swimming with whale sharks is ethical starts from that fact, and the studies below look at what it has changed. They come from researchers who spent years in the water at Tan-awan identifying individual sharks from photographs.

How Oslob got here

From hunting ground to feeding site

Until the late 1990s

Hunting in the Bohol Sea

Then the species was protected nationally.⁹
Afterwards

Tourism begins

Donsol in Sorsogon led the way.¹⁰
2011

Feeding starts at Oslob

Daily sightings follow.³
2012

Ordinance adopted

A code of conduct for the water.¹¹
2015

182,000 visitors

From the municipal tourist logbook.¹²
2018

Over 500,000 visitors

Ticket sales estimated in the millions.¹³

What is the whale shark's diet in the wild?

In the open sea a whale shark is a filter feeder. It gulps water and filters out plankton, fish eggs, crustaceans and schooling fish, and occasionally larger prey such as squid or tuna.¹⁴ Its 20 filter pads let it sift an average of 20,723 grams of plankton a day.¹⁵ A juvenile is estimated to eat 21 kg of plankton a day.¹⁶

That food is patchy and moves with the seasons, and whale sharks move with it. They are highly migratory, with daily movements of about 24 to 28 km, even though they also return to favourite feeding sites.¹⁷ Two whale sharks identified in Honda Bay in Palawan were matched to Oslob, about 500 km away.¹⁸

At Tan-awan the food is delivered by hand, daily and all year, in a small patch of sea.¹⁹ ¹ That contrast with the scattered food of the open sea is at the centre of the debate.

Behaviour at the feeding site

How the sharks spent their time, in percent

Share of 357 hours of focal observation of 59 whale sharks at the Oslob feeding site.²⁰

Three studies

What researchers found at Oslob

Study period	Focus	Main finding
2012 to 2015	Who visits and stays	208 sharks; nine year-round residents
2012 to 2014	Learning and code of conduct	Sharks learn the site; limits often exceeded
2015 to 2017	Behaviour in the water	People within 2 m in 93% of surveys

The three studies of the Oslob feeding site cited on this page, by their survey periods.²¹ ⁶ ⁴ ²² ²³

Your call

Oslob or a site without feeding?

Match the choice to what matters most to you

A near-certain encounter Sharks that are not fed Supporting local livelihoods Fewer people in the water

Oslob

Daily sightings since the feeding began.³

A seasonal site

A Palawan listing states its sharks are not fed.

Oslob, done by the rules

It gives the fisherfolk an alternative income.²⁴

Go early and stay at the edge

Crowding is the main issue researchers record.²³

Since prolonged residency equates to less time foraging naturally, provisioning could influence foraging success, alter distributions and lead to dependency in later life stages.

Royal Society Open Science (Thomson et al. 2017)Source 7

The sharks learn where the food is

One study followed individual sharks over time. Newly identified sharks gradually arrived earlier at the feeding site, which shows they learn to link the place with food; sharks with a long history there arrived on average 5 minutes after the feeder boats.⁴ Whale sharks are known to learn elsewhere too, circling the feeding point in captivity when keepers appear with food.²⁵

Feeding changed how they behave around people. Sharks with a longer sighting history were less likely to avoid touches or contact with boats, and experienced sharks were more likely to feed upright.⁵ In 357 hours of observation of 59 sharks, vertical feeding took up 58.2% of the time, horizontal feeding 21.8% and free swimming 20.2%, while natural feeding made up 0.02%.²⁰

A study from 2015 to 2017 confirmed the pattern.²³ The number of previous visits strongly predicted a shark's behaviour, and provisioned sharks were less likely to show avoidance.²³ Calm sharks make a better photograph, but the earlier study reads that calm as habituation, a tolerance of people learned over repeated visits.

Checklist

Going with a light footprint

In the water

Keep the full distance from side, tail and mouth
Never touch or ride a shark
No splashing, no chasing

Before and after

Skip sunscreen, wear a rash guard
Choose a guide who follows the briefing
Leave the water when your time ends

Video

Shark Scientist Reacts to Inside Asia's Most Hated Tourism Attraction

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Who stays and for how long

A three-year photo-identification study counted 208 individual whale sharks at Oslob, on average 18.6 a week, with a range from 6 to 43.²¹ Their patterns varied widely, from a single visit to sporadic visits, seasonal residency and year-round residency.⁶ Nine became year-round residents, which the authors call a clear response to provisioning.⁶

The authors spell out what that could mean. Long residency means less time foraging naturally, so provisioning could influence foraging success, alter where the sharks go and lead to dependency later in life.⁷ They add, in the same sentence, that these impacts must be weighed against the benefits of provisioning, tourism income in a remote community, to reach informed management decisions.⁷

Not every shark stays. The patterns run from a single visit to year-round residency, and sharks identified at Oslob have turned up hundreds of kilometres away.⁶ ¹⁸ The research describes a mix of residents and passers-by, not a captive group. That matters when you read claims that the Oslob sharks never leave: some do stay, many come and go, and the studies cannot say where the visitors spend the rest of the year.

The people side: livelihoods and crowds

Whale shark watching gives the fisherfolk of Oslob an alternative source of livelihood.²⁴ The Province of Cebu describes the Tan-awan site as drawing thousands of local and foreign tourists each year and providing livelihood for residents.²⁶ A later study reports over 500,000 tourists in 2018, with ticket sales its authors estimate in the millions.¹³

Those numbers are why crowding is the other issue researchers raise. In the surveys from 2015 to 2017, 93% recorded people less than 2 m from a shark, which the authors call poor compliance and overcrowding.²³ They call for better management to raise compliance and for sustainable practices, given how much the community relies on the industry.²⁷

What these studies call for is management: impacts weighed against benefits, and better compliance with the rules in the water.⁷ ²⁷ Whether you go is your decision; how you behave in the water once you are there is the part the research can help with. Booking with an operator whose guides enforce the briefing, and arriving early before the beach fills, are two small choices that line up with what the studies ask for.

If you decide to go

Follow the code of conduct exactly. Keep at least 5 m from the side and tail and 2 m from the mouth, and do not touch, ride or splash.²⁸ ²⁹ Only the feeders may feed the sharks.²⁹ The sharks will often let you closer than that; the rule is yours to keep, not theirs.

Stay at the edge of the group, let a shark pass rather than following it, and leave the water when your time is up. A calm morning at the outer end of the boat line usually gives a better view than the crowded middle, and it adds less pressure on the animal.

If you would rather see whale sharks that are not fed, look at the seasonal sites elsewhere in the Philippines, such as Donsol or Honda Bay, covered on our page about other whale shark places. They require more luck, since the sharks there come and go on their own schedule. A trip there is a gamble with the weather and the season, and some boats come back with nothing to show; for many travellers that uncertainty is exactly the point.

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