Look! Up In The Sky! It's A Bird, It's a Plane, It's a Whale Shark

National Geographic is currently boasting that they have been "exploring our world for over a century". Don't worry guys, I'm sure you'll find where you left the car keys eventually. Since they have been at this for over a hundred years though I must ask, when are they going to stick a fork in the planet and say "It's done"? We can only handle so many twenty episode documentaries on the sex life of the tapeworm.

Lately Nat Geo seem to have been obsessing on the whale shark. It's got to the point where a whale shark can't turn over in bed without a team from National Geographic on hand to record the occasion. Whale sharks are being watched, filmed, tagged, pursued and tracked. This is tantamount to stalking. Whale sharks, two words; restraining order.

For those who don't know whale sharks are whacking big fish. They're called whale sharks because they're dumber than whales and less ferocious than sharks. They are the big lumbering lunk of the ocean, always a little bit behind everyone else but tolerated because of their inoffensive gormlessness. They are also surprisingly difficult to track which has been driving National Geographic nuts. I can't help thinking the old whale shark has a surprise or two up its fluke (which it doesn't have because it isn't a whale, no letters please).

In their ongoing attempts to worry the whale shark to death Nat Geo has wheeled out the big guns. They have dialled in the assistance of NASA which has provided tracking equipment normally used for star navigation to keep an eye on the elusive whale shark. How is this supposed to help? Do they really expect to find schools of whale sharks in orbit around Proxima Centauri? Although if there are it would help explain why National Geographic is finding them so difficult to track.

In my quieter moments (after the medication has kicked in) it pleases me to think of whale sharks swimming happily between the stars far from the attention of pesky scientists and downright irritating documentary makers. Across the cold, eternal void the whale sharks frolic happily, alone save for others of their kind, basking in the light of far distant suns and occasionally plunging back to earth to visit the relatives and annoy National Geographic.

There is no sight in nature more magnificent than a whale shark dancing in the dawn sky. Only a rare few have been privileged to see twenty tons of plankton gobbling sea beast disporting itself in the stratosphere. And none of these are employed by National Geographic. The whale sharks know when to move and when to be very still indeed.

Ah yes, its a beautiful picture, but its all rubbish. The entire swimming between the stars is simple misdirection to put National Geographic off the scent. The real truth is that whale sharks died out millions of years ago. The ones we see are time travellers popping forward from their home in the warm waters of the Cretacean oceans to see how the world is getting along. They may not say much but they are silently taking note and measuring our progress. There will come a day when whale sharks will walk (all right, swim) amongst us and give us a mark out of ten for what we have achieved so far.

On that day they will be so surrounded by people from National Geographic that no one else will notice.