A friendly whale shark followed a tourist boat in Myanmar.

Footage shows the enormous 16ft-long marine mammal's figure moving around the vessel off the coast of Age Saung beach, on October 19.

Tourist Aung Ko Latt Latt said they did not expect to have such a close encounter with the creature.

She said: ‘The whale shark came really close to the boat and near the water surface. We were amazed by how big it was and scared a bit since it was too close.'

Whale sharks are classified as ‘endangered' by the nongovernment organisation International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as its population suffered a decline of more than 50 per cent over the last decades. It is also the larges living non mammalian vertebrate.