Imagine if you could keep a school of whale sharks in a zoo. You could take blood samples much more easily. You could watch the sharks’ behavior every day of the year. You would know how they grew and reproduced. But whale sharks are gigantic. They need a gigantic ocean to live in.

Keeping track of large sea animals is tough. Marine biologists tag whale sharks to track their movements. They get some good data about the whale shark life cycle—until the whale sharks dive deep. The pressure of deep water makes tags fall off.

People started a database to help identify whale sharks all over the world. So far, people have logged more than 8,000 of the animals using the fishes’ distinctive dot patterns. But scientists can afford to spend only a few weeks in the Galapagos Islands each year to look for whale sharks. So they depend on photos taken by visiting divers to figure out what whale sharks they studied this year are up to. So far, none of the sharks spotted in the Galapagos has been seen anywhere else.

It can be easy for us to feel like know-it-alls. These days, all kinds of science information is available to us with just a few clicks of a mouse. But hard-to-track animals give us a healthy dose of humility. Another whale shark disappears into the ocean without a trace. We’re reminded: We don’t know it all—at all!

The reward for humility and fear of the Lord is riches and honor and life.―Proverbs 22:4