Tuna-fishing teen spots giant whale shark off North Carolina: 'Once-in-a-lifetime'

An 18-year-old tuna fisherman off North Carolina just had the kind of ocean encounter most people only see in documentaries.

On a Sunday trip with his father, Charles Gaddy realized the huge, white-spotted fish moving alongside their boat was a whale shark.

What happened?

More than 40 miles off Oregon Inlet, Gaddy spotted what he later described as "this big gray fish with white dots," WRAL News reported.

"Just from reading books and watching movies as a kid, I was like, 'that's got to be a whale shark,'" Gaddy said.

After circling the animal with his father, Gaddy pulled out his GoPro to film it.

His video shows the giant fish cruising calmly near the boat. Gaddy said, "It's just sitting there, swimming beside us. It really, truly was amazing."

Eric Hoffmayer of the National Marine Fisheries Service said encounters like that are uncommon in those waters, though not impossible. In the Western Atlantic, he said, whale sharks are more often found in the Gulf and Caribbean, and some head north in the Gulf Stream toward New England in late summer and early fall.

"It's not unheard of, but it's not real common either," Hoffmayer said, describing the sighting as rare but plausible.

To show how far the species can travel, Hoffmayer pointed to another case. "We had an animal last year that we tagged off Tampa and within a month was off New York, and cruised right past North Carolina about this time of year."

Why does it matter?

Listed as endangered, whale sharks are also the largest fish in the world. Each confirmed sighting gives researchers and conservationists another clue about where the animals travel.

A single sighting cannot be attributed to one factor alone, but scientists have documented that warming oceans, shifting currents, and other human-driven environmental changes are altering where sea life appears. In some cases, that can raise the odds of people crossing paths with animals in places where those encounters once felt rare.

Gaddy said the sighting was "no doubt a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and I'm no doubt very blessed."

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