Hi there, my name is Wilbur the whale shark.
Like my friend Billy, I am known as one of the largest sharks and am a very friendly fish! My friends have been telling me how well you have been doing and I'm really looking forward to introducing more fun activities like tumbleturns and snorkel slalom. Don't forget your pyjamas again this term as we have more fun to come on self-rescue day as well as some float skills to help you relax in the water just like me!
Let me tell you a little bit more …
The children are going to have great fun this term! As their stroke work has developed we will be trying tumbleturns for the first time, which involves a somersault and glide instead of stopping in a distance. They are great fun to do and make us so much faster when we do a race of more than one width. Photos are available this term on day 7, which is a great opportunity for another memory!
Don't forget the pyjamas on self-rescue day again as we are going to try some fun floats wearing them and as well as more stamina building skills like diving through hoops and swimming to the side.
As the largest fish in the sea when I stop growing I could reach up to 12 metres in length and weigh 20.6 tons! I'm actually considered the second heaviest animal on this planet, with only Blue Whales bigger than me. So next time you see an adult elephant, I am typically twice the weight of one of those.
Being this big I can eat practically whatever I like but lucky for the rest of the sea, my favourite meal is plankton and I swim along the surface of the sea with my mouth open scooping up thousands of these tiny fish every day-just like my friend Billy! One of my friends did some research once with a scientist and they reckon he ate 21kg's of plankton a day, and he was only 6 metres long. That's about the same weight as most 6 year old in England, a day!!! But don't panic, we don't eat small children, just plankton.'
I can live for up to 70 years, so I'll be around for longer than most other animals you will see in the Ocean. One of my favourite activities is to swim along watching Scuba Divers and pose for all their pictures and videos they want to take. Lucky I'm so handsome really, otherwise they probably wouldn't be as interested in me.'
I look like a shark with a flat head, short barbels protruding from my nostrils and up to 300 small teeth in each row but am a friendly fish and sometimes even allow swimmers to swim on my back-just like you when you do scooter tows!
I like to live in warm waters in all tropical seas and often migrate to the central west coast of Australia for my holidays every spring. I am a very relaxed fish and we are going to have lots of fun this term doing floats in our pyjamas and races with tumbleturns. I will be cheering you on and hope you have lots of fun!
Next term, you will be meeting Bradley The Blue Shark