Saleh Bay vs Oslob: fishing platforms against year-round provisioning

By Saleh Bay Whale Shark Editorial Desk

Saleh Bay vs Oslob compares two different set-ups. Oslob, in the Philippines, is built around year-round provisioning, which published research has measured closely. Saleh Bay encounters happen at working fishing platforms, though operators report baiting at some of them, and no available study measures its effect there. Oslob's record does not make Saleh Bay ethical by comparison, because the Saleh Bay evidence is missing.

How is the Oslob encounter built?

Around feeding. A Royal Society Open Science paper says provisioning has supported shark watching at Oslob since 2011. A later paper in the same journal calls Oslob the largest non-captive provisioned whale shark destination, with more than 500,000 tourists a year. Provisioning here means people put food in the water so that sharks stay where visitors can reach them. At Oslob that is the design of the business.

That clarity is why Oslob is the usual comparison, and also why it makes a poor shortcut. When a place is defined by one practice, researchers can study that practice directly. When a place mixes a fishery, wild feeding and what operators describe as some baiting, there is much less to measure against.

What has research measured at Oslob?

More than you might expect, with some small samples. The numbers below are for Oslob, and for nowhere else.

The first paper warns that prolonged residency means less time foraging naturally, and that provisioning could influence foraging success and cause dependency. That wording is cautious. The metabolic work is striking, but a range from 1.3% to 17.8% in a sample of four tells you the direction of an effect far better than its size.

How is Saleh Bay different?

The sharks there gather around bagans, fishing platforms that exist to catch small fish at night, and the visitor boat comes to the fishery. Oslob's visitors come to a feeding operation. That is a real difference of origin. It does not settle what happens on a given morning at a given platform.

The natural side of the Saleh Bay story has support: an IUCN shark specialist group factsheet cites local ecological knowledge of whale sharks feeding in the area long before the bagan fishery, as our bagan page sets out. That supports a natural origin for the habit and says nothing about whether crews add food today.

Lower volume does not rule out crowding at one spot either. Ocean Earth Travels, an operator, describes several boats around one active bagan in dry season, with uneven enforcement; our ethics page gives its figure.

Saleh Bay vs Oslob: is baiting the same thing?

Not on current evidence, but it is too close to wave away. Ocean Earth Travels says some operators supplement the bagan with extra bait, and, on its ethics page, that some crews feed deliberately because a shark held at the platform earns money. SB Excursions, another operator, says fishermen at some platforms hand fish over to hold sharks there, and it calls that provisioning, the same word the Oslob papers use. Both companies sell trips, so their statements about other sellers need care. They are still admissions from inside the trade.

The useful way to frame the difference is frequency and purpose, and no source gives either for Saleh Bay. A 2025 Frontiers paper notes that tourism feeding in Cenderawasih Bay and Kaimana seems to happen no more than 60 to 100 days a year, much lower than year-round Oslob. That figure describes those two places in the Bird's Head Seascape and cannot be borrowed for Sumbawa.

Indonesia itself shows how varied this is. The same paper says sightings at Botubarani are not bagan-related, and are associated with baitfish and shrimp-carapace feeding by small boats. "Bagan site" and "feeding site" are overlapping categories, and other Indonesian locations sit at different points between them.

What is unknown for Saleh Bay?

• How many days a year, and at how many platforms, sharks are fed for tourists.
• Whether sharks there spend more time at the surface because of it, or use more energy. We know of no study that has run the Oslob measurements at Saleh Bay.
• Whether residency figures are inflated. The Frontiers paper warns that apparent high residency might be overestimated because provisioning could encourage repeat visits, which complicates any count of returning sharks.
• Whether Oslob's dependency concern applies at a lower level of feeding. The Oslob results warn about a mechanism, and they are a poor estimate of its size anywhere else.

Does one blogger name a no-feeding site elsewhere?

Peter Orsel, a travel blogger, names Donsol in the Philippines as a contrast. He says it runs under WWF Philippines guidelines with no feeding, trained interaction officers, three metres from the head and four from the tail, a season of roughly November to May, and no guaranteed sightings. That is a blogger's summary, not checked here against WWF Philippines, so treat it as a lead and not a recommendation.

Which one should you choose?

Saleh Bay or Oslob? We will not rank them, because the comparison people want does not exist. Instead, work through what you can actually decide.

1. If avoiding any feeding is your line, Oslob fails by design, and Saleh Bay cannot be assumed to pass. You would need a seller's written statement about bait, and even then you are relying on its word.
2. If you want a known quantity, Oslob's effects are better documented, though much of that documentation is a list of concerns.
3. If you want to see whether a fishery-based encounter fits your values, read our page on the ethics of Saleh Bay trips and then ask the bait question before you pay anyone.

No comparison exists for families, photographers or first-time swimmers either. For Saleh Bay the known constraints are a very early start and local rules that, according to Kompas, prohibit camera lights. For Oslob, check the site's current rules directly, because this guide does not cover them.

Be wary of any seller, or any website including this one, that uses Oslob to make Saleh Bay sound clean. A worse practice elsewhere is not evidence about this bay.

What do people ask when comparing Saleh Bay and Oslob?

Is Saleh Bay better than Oslob?

No study available here compares them directly, so no fair ranking exists. Oslob is provisioned by design, and its effects have been measured. Saleh Bay is fishery-based with reported baiting, and those effects have not been measured.

Do they feed whale sharks at Saleh Bay like at Oslob?

Not as the whole basis of the trip, but operators including Ocean Earth Travels and SB Excursions report extra bait or hand-feeding at some platforms. How often that happens at Saleh Bay is unknown.

What does research say about Oslob feeding?

Published work identified 208 sharks with nine year-round residents, warned of dependency, and in a study of four sharks estimated a 7.2% higher metabolic rate in provisioned juveniles, with a range from 1.3 to 17.8%.

Does the Oslob evidence apply to Saleh Bay?

Not directly. It shows what provisioning can do at one heavily fed site. Feeding frequency and scale at Saleh Bay are unmeasured, so the Oslob figures cannot be applied there as they stand.

Which sources support this page?

• Royal Society Open Science: Oslob provisioning and residency
• Royal Society Open Science: in-water observations at Oslob
• Scientific Reports: energetic cost of provisioning at Oslob
• Antara: keeping whale sharks and people in balance in Saleh Bay
• IUCN shark specialist group: Saleh Bay Important Shark and Ray Area factsheet
• Ocean Earth Travels: whale sharks of Saleh Bay (operator)
• Ocean Earth Travels: ethics of whale shark tourism in Indonesia (operator)
• SB Excursions: swimming with whale sharks in Indonesia (operator)
• Frontiers in Marine Science: 2025 paper on Indonesian whale shark aggregations
• Kompas: whale shark tourism in Saleh Bay
• Peter Orsel: swimming with whale sharks in Sumbawa (travel blog)

How do I reach the desk?

If you are deciding between the two and want the sources for Saleh Bay explained, ask the desk on WhatsApp +62 811-3941-4563 or by email at bd@juaraholding.com. The desk has no Oslob offering to compare, and nothing it says about Saleh Bay binds anyone until it appears in a written offer. Requests through us can lead to a paid booking, a commercial interest described on the about page.