The biggest fish in the ocean isn’t a giant scary predator. It’s the whale shark - a gentle, slow-swimming, polka-dotted giant that grows up to 40 feet long and weighs over 20 tons. And its diet is mostly tiny plankton and the occasional small fish.
To eat, the whale shark cruises with its enormous 4-foot-wide mouth wide open, gulping in huge amounts of water. The water gets pushed back out through its gills, while special filter pads trap the plankton inside. About 1,500 gallons of water move through its mouth every hour.
The mouth might be the size of a doorway, but its throat is no wider than a baseball - so the whale shark physically couldn’t swallow anything bigger if it wanted to. Despite the scary “shark” in its name, divers swim safely alongside whale sharks all the time. They’re some of the calmest, most curious giants in the sea.
