Mission Whale Shark Accomplished

UPDATE: Photos Here

After ten long weeks of work I headed up to the Ningaloo Reef with Tanya (a fellow teacher). We stopped for the night in Carnavon to visit with her mom and then went up to Exmouth the next day. As it was a 900 km journey the stop was welcome. Our first day in Exmouth we went to a small beach called Bundegi and did a snorkel. Although the conditions weren't ideal it was just what we needed after driving so far.

The next day I went on the whale shark tour and Tanya went out on a dive boat to the Murion Islands. There were 18 people on my tour. We headed around to the west side of the cape and took a boat to the outside of the reef. We saw some dolphins on the way. There we had a snorkel. It wasn't spectacular but I saw a couple of turtles.

The whale shark spotter plan went up and we headed south to snorkel with the whale sharks. Each boat can only stay with the whale shark for 90 minutes and swimmers can only be in the water for 60 minutes. The company that I went with (Ningaloo Reef Dreaming) uses its own spotter plane so we were not going to have to share any shark sightings with other boats. There are also rules about where you can be in relations to the whale shark. You need to be 3 m from the shark on the sides and 4m from the shark around the tail. You are not allowed to be in front of the shark.

The plane did not immediately find a whale shark so we had a bit of a swim and later another snorkel. Then right as we sat down to lunch the spotter plane found two whale sharks for us. The first group finished eating and geared up. When we were near the area the whale shark had been seen one of the guides jumped in and located the shark. He swam along side and then the other swimmers jumped in. They were supposed to immediately look for the shark and then swim to the side of the shark (as opposed to the front of the shark). In the excitement they forgot.

Our group got their chance in a bit. It was really exciting. I got quite a few photos. The groups swapped back and forth. On my second swim I was getting a bit tired. I then realised that it was only me, the guide and the shark. The rest of the people couldn't keep up. When I got back to the boat the skipper and the deckie were really impressed. In their words "Girl you can swim". It was a great experience. I got another two swims. It was really great.

The only down side of the day was that somehow I lost my sunglasses. The crew said that we swam with the shark all up for 51 minutes. The average swim time of the other tour operators in 2007 was 6 minutes. For the operator that I went with the average swim time in 2007 was 48 minutes so we had a great swim. The whale shark wasn't huge. It was 3.5m. The big ones in the area run around 10-12 m. The largest one seen is 18m.

Tanya had a good day diving. She did three dives and was quite pleased.

The next day we drove into Ningaloo Reef Marine Park and snorkeled at a couple of places. The best was Turquoise Bay. We saw a few dolphins as we walked down the beach. I did two snorkels there. There were heaps of fish. On the first snorkel I also saw a reef shark. On the second snorkel I found a turtle that let me swim with it for about 15-20 minutes. It went up for air twice, swam gracefully around and ate a bit of something from the sea floor. It was really great. Unfortunately, my camera quit working.

Later we went back to Exmouth and I read by the pool for the rest of the day. Later I found that I had really sunburned my back and bottom. It was very, very painful.

The next day we drove down to Coral Bay. Tanya and I did a nice snorkel there. The corals there are so great - a great variety of color, size and shape. My favorite is the lavender coral. Due to my sunburn I spent the rest of the day in the shade. Tanya did a ATV tour and had a super time.

Just before sunset I spread some of my mom's ashes in the bay. She very much enjoyed her visit to Coral Bay several years ago. Amazingly my camera came to life just to take a photo of the area I put the ashes. I am not sure if that was heavenly intervention or fate.

Today we drove back. It took about 8 hours so I am a bit done in.

I tried to get the photos off my camera. I think it is only the display that is broken. However, I couldn't get them. I am going to try to use a card reader to get them directly from the memory card. I will post them if I can.

All in all it was a really great trip.