The Wandering Whale Shark

I can't remember exactly how it went, but my sister convinced me that I needed to have a whale shark in my book about whales. When I first came up with my character list, a whale shark wasn't on it. Afterall, a whale shark is a shark, not a whale. It does behave somewhat like a whale in that it filter feeds like a baleen whale, but other than that, it's all shark. They're beautiful creatures and I like them, but I just didn't see how one of these would fit into my story. That changed..

My sister Julie invited me to come see her in Atlanta and the only thing on the 'to-do' list was go to the Atlanta Aquarium with her and her son. When we got there in the middle of the school day, in the middle of the school year, we were in the middle of about 2,000 kids and chaperones. But the excitement of the ocean filled every corner of the building and spilled out into world around the aquarium. No doubt, countless dreams and stories left that building that day and many days before and since that one. One of stories was my own because I knew exactly what I wanted to do with a whale shark in my book about whales.

One of the first things I noticed about these gentle giants (the Atlanta Aquarium has 4 of them) was that they never stop moving. It made sense that a shark that doesn't breathe air would need to keep moving, but I just hadn't thought about it. Seeing the whale sharks in person changed my idea of what one could become in a story if given a few human characteristics. I thought to myself, a spy is always on the move, always gathering stuff about this or that and filtering through it. A whale shark does too. It also has little remora fish following it around and the fish help them out. Maybe if a whale shark was truly a spy, these remora fish would be passing the shark secrets. There's also little known about whale sharks because they tend to do their own thing after feeding, perhaps it's because of their spy secrets..

The Wandering Whale Shark bloomed out of a trip to the Atlanta Aquarium. He's a wanderer who picks up information and spreads it to whom he sees fit. Luckily for 'The Pod', the shark thinks kindly of them, though 'The Pod' itself is not so quick to trust this stranger in the same way that they trust one another.