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TAN-AWAN, Philippines – Lorene de Guzman rows her small wooden strut out to sea in the predawn light to manually feed the aquatic giants.

One of the giants, a whale shark known as 180, is swimming, with its huge mouth floating on the surface of the still ocean.

“Where have you been?” Mr. de Guzman asks 180, who he hasn’t seen in weeks, throwing a handful of shrimp into the water and scraping it lightly. debris from the shark’s body. “You must have gone to a far place.”

When 180 people are finished with breakfast, Mr. de Guzman looks out and waits in the calm water, hoping the tourists might return today or someday.

The waters around Tan-Awan, his town of nearly 2,000 people in Cebu Province, attracted more than half a million tourists in 2019, all eager to interact with the gigantic and charismatic marine animals that can reach 60 feet in length.

Despite their impressive size, whale sharks are gentle giants. Their mouths are huge, but they are filter feeders. Their hundreds of vestigial teeth are small and cannot bite.

In the days before the pandemic, whale shark tourism was booming in Tan-Awan, a sleepy fishing community until the region’s large animals became a global draw nearly a decade ago.

But even before the pandemic, international visits to Tan-Awan and the wider municipality that surround it, Oslob, nearly stopped. difficult questions were asked about the controversial relationship between a declining species and a population struggling to survive.

Whale sharks are migratory, but Tan-Awan’s tourism-dependent residents, such as Mr. de Guzman, have kept at least some of them year-round, with highly contentious practices such as feeding wild animals on a daily schedule.

Whale sharks and humans, which pose no threat and frequent coastal areas, have been meeting for a long time, often to the detriment of the animals.

“Accessibility makes them a pretty good target species,” said Ariana Agustines, a marine biologist who studies whale shark populations in the Philippines. “Unfortunately in the past in terms of hunting; and tourism in the present.”

Human diet has changed the behavior of whale sharks. “They typically have a very varied diet,” said Ms. Agustines. They eat coral, lobster larvae, different types of zooplankton, even small fish.

In Tan-Awan, however, sergestid shrimps, known locally as Uyap, are procured. “It’s just one kind of food,” said Miss Agustines. “This is a huge deviation from their natural diet.”

These whale sharks have also changed their diving behavior by spending more time near the surface, causing significantly more scarring and abrasions on their bodies from boats and other floating hazards.

But the appeal of a practically guaranteed sight to tourists means that Tan-Awan residents have no intention of giving up the feeding practice, despite increasing pressure to stop. Tourism money means a lot, with whale shark encounters bringing in $3.5 million to the region.

“The whale sharks lifted us up into the air,” Mr. de Guzman said. “They gave people jobs”

They also claim that the people who feed the sharks grew up close to the animals and that the sharks were close to them.

“They took it to us. If we don’t feed them, they’ll leave. It’s going to hurt their feelings. They’ll pout,” says Mr. de Guzman. “We feed them even if we run out of budget. We borrow money to feed them.”

Affection is facilitated by both the harmonious nature of sharks and how easily identifiable individuals are.

Each whale shark has a unique constellation that resembles the stars in the night sky, “marokintana” or “many stars”, which inspired its name in Madagascar. It is “geger lintang” or “stars in the back” in Javanese.

In the past, local fishermen avoided sharks. But a little over 10 years ago, a fisherman, Jerson Soriano, started playing with them in the water. A local resort owner was impressed by this enthusiastic interaction and asked Mr. Soriano to carry some of his guests to the water so they could swim with the giants.

Mr. Soriano started baiting whale sharks with yap. More fishermen followed. They set up a marine ranger’s association responsible for both feeding the sharks and ferrying tourists to see them. Visitors posted whale shark selfies on social media. Suddenly, the local waters filled with visitors.

The quiet town lit up with resorts and restaurants. Younger residents stayed to work in Tan-Awan rather than migrate to the city or abroad. Mr. De Guzman’s income doubled, then tripled, and he rebuilt his home. The only high school in the region was opened.

However, the practice of supplying the World Wildlife Fund with only one of many conservation organizations has come under strong criticism. Misunderstanding of the idea of ​​feeding whale sharks and urges tourists in the Philippines to head to Donsol, an unsupplied site to see them.

About 1,900 whale sharks have been spotted in Philippine waters, the world’s second largest known population. Scientists give individual whale numbers for names.

Globally, the whale shark population has more than halved over the past 75 years, and their decline in the Indo-Pacific region has been even faster, 63 percent, according to statistics leading them to be listed as an endangered species in 2016.

Mark Rendon, head of the marine guards, was aware of the criticism but was unimpressed. “We know whale sharks better than they do,” he said of conservationists’ efforts to end the practice.

A much larger and more pressing concern for Mr. Rendon is the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. With no tourists coming, hospitality workers, motorcyclists, and whale shark boaters are lurking around for alternative sources of income. Doors and windows throughout the town were boarded up.

“A nightmare,” said Mr. Rendon.

As the epidemic dragged on, many of the whale shark guards began to return to their old and far less lucrative trades: fishing and farming.

Conservationists point to the pain that Tan-Awan now feels as a good reason to avoid the dietary pattern adopted here.

“In most places where it’s not supplied worldwide, it’s seasonal,” said Ms Agustines about the appearance of whale sharks. “So with this seasonality, there’s an opportunity to have a different income group so that the community isn’t totally dependent on one species in case something happens.”

Outbreak or not, whale sharks continued to emerge just in time to feed.

Mr Rendon said the guards had approached different government bodies to raise money for the more than 60 pounds of shrimp needed each day. “If that goes away,” said Mr. Rendon of the small amounts of subsidies, “all that will go away.”

This September, a fisherman went to Mr. Soriano’s house and found him dead. The man known as the father of Tan-Awan’s boom in whale shark tourism had killed himself.

On the day he died, Mr. Soriano spoke to his sister, Rica Joy, who was concerned about how thin she was. The family was told that he died on an empty stomach. Like most of the other guards, the money he earned during the tourism boom didn’t last long. “He was a one-day millionaire,” his sister said.

When Mr. de Guzman sets out to sea to feed whale sharks, he often thinks of his children. He says he helped by sending money home from another province where his daughter went to become a diving instructor, as there is now very little income from tourism.

“I used to hand-feed my kids when they were babies,” Mr. de Guzman recalled. “It makes me think all these whale sharks are my children.”