For most people, an up-close encounter with a whale shark — the largest fish in the sea — is a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

For one Florida fisherman, however, it’s becoming a once-a-month occurrence.

For the second time in roughly three weeks, Cory Kauffman of Ft. Walton Beach had an encounter with a whale shark, this one about 30 feet in length, he said, larger than the one he saw in mid-July.

Kaufman was in a similar location earlier this week, about 3-4 miles south of Destin Pass, when he spotted the larger whale shark.

“It was insane,” he told AL.com. “I wasn’t even looking for one. I was actually following bait balls and trying to find bonita and occasionally tracking a big pod of dolphins.”

But the dolphins weren’t alone. Gracefully swimming alongside, at the surface, was the whale shark, with the dolphins visible between the whale shark and the coast of Destin, as seen in the video Kauffman sent to AL.com.

“I’m always keeping my eye up for fish crashing and it’s hard to miss that monster,” said Kauffman, an avid fisherman who retired from the U.S. Air Force a couple of years ago, “especially with that many dolphins escorting it.”

The sightings of whale sharks of the coast of the Florida Panhandle are at their highest level since 2009, according to the University of Southern Mississippi’s Center for Fisheries Research and Development.

“The (whale) sharks seem to be targeting a fish spawn but the shift in location appears to be driven by water temperature changes,” the USM researchers said in a release. “We are currently studying these animals while they are nearshore to gather as much information from them as possible.”