Chris Garner, age 10, of Denton, N.C., for his question:

WHAT IS A WHALE SHARK?

This fellow is a whopping shark, almost as big as the giant whales. In fact, he is the biggest fish in the worldwide ocean. The blue balleen whale is bigger, but he does not count in this contest. He is an air breathing, seagoing mammal and not even distantly related to the true fishes.

We think of the sharks as murderous killers  and most of them are. But not the whale shark. This gentle giant may. bump into a boat and tip it over by accident. But he is not interested in biting bathers or gobbling up human swimmers.

This is nice to. know, because he may be 60 feet long and weigh more than 60 tons. His enormous mouth is at least five feet wide. When he opens it wide it is big enough for two grown men to crouch inside. However, he has hundreds of sharky teeth arranged in 10 to 15 rows, top and bottom.

His whopping body is darkish gray, decorated all over with attractive dots and dashes in white or yellow. Larger dots adorn his big back and smaller polka dots crowd together over his huge head. As a rule, the rows of big dots along his back are separated by long white lines. And, of all things, his rough skin is six inches thick.

With all those teeth, you would expect this whale of a shark to feed on large chunks of meat. Not at all. His favorite food is soupy plankton, a nourishing mixture of the smallest plants and animals that live in the sea. When sardines and other small fishes swim by, he eats them, too  though he does not bother to chase after them.

The gentle giant seems to be a very lazy fellow. He stays near the surface, swimming along at perhaps 2 miles per hour. As he goes, he repeats \a croaking sound that echoes far and wide through the water. Scientists suspect that these echoing sounds may help him to locate solid objects and perhaps food. Most of the time he stays in tropical seas, where he sometimes scratches his back on a passing boat. Nobody knows much about his family life, though some experts suspect that the female gives birth to perhaps 16 or so live babies.