Exmouth Pt. 2 - Whale Shark!!!

The sun came up as we drove over the crest, slowly climbing up on the corner of world lazily flooding the dim sky with a red and orange glow. The world woke up on our 10 minute drive coming into colour. Today was a day we would never repeat. Whale Shark Day.

It’s simple to say that we were a little excited about today. This was one of the things I have wanted to do since I came to Australia and we both decided we needed to do it regardless of anything. We actually got really lucky with the whole situation because the Whale Sharks aren’t normally around now, their season is March to July, but we still got to see them in early August. Lots of companies have stopped doing their tours but we liked the sound of ours and they gave us a good guarantee so we did it. And my my, are we glad we did!!

We took our little boat to the big boat, the Blue Marlin which would be our home for the day. We were introduced to the crew and given a briefing and then rocked off to the other side of the Reef. Just so you know the Ningaloo is the closest and most accessible Reef in the world, it is within viewing distance from land unlike the Great Barrier Reef which is a 2 hour journey away. The Ningaloo creates a lagoon effect on the ocean between it and the land taming the Indian Ocean. Its waves crash over the reef which is sometimes less than a meter from the surface and level out in the lagoon.
So we made our way  through the reef and spotted a HumpBack Whale Breaching not far from us, the crew said that it was very rare that they are on the land side of the reef and it must be lost, so we coaxed what turned out to be two whales out of the reef and away to safety. We headed out bounding over the swell and headed south  so we could have our first snorkel of the day. We left the boat near the reef and dove down to see what we could find. We saw lots of fish and a turtle drifting by. When we put our head under water we could hear whale songs, It was unreal.

After a false alarm of seeing a whale shark the crew decided it was time for another snorkel.  I wasn’t feeling well but Holly went.  They swam through huge reef and coral and had a run in with a Reef Shark taking it easy.  The coral was all a lot different to the stuff that we had seen in all of our previous snorkels.  The spotter plane flew over head as we had morning tea to find some Whale Sharks, after some sailing false alarms and lots of bouncing around on the boat the skipper put full speed on and raced off to the south. This was the big one.

When we arrived we as group one went first and left the boat, we followed the spotter who kept an eye on the beast so we knew where to go, went ahead and we followed. Its fair to say that the skipper didn’t know exactly where the Whale Shark was, he dropped us behind it and around 50 meters away, so we had a mad dash to get to it. But my word…..Out of the deep blue of the ocean appeared this gracious white freckled beauty. This thing was 5.5 meters long and swam lazily along with its entourage of smaller fish. We swam along side it, jumped on the boat and jumped off again right in front of it. We both got some incredible view of the creature. We swam with it for abound 50 minutes the only boat to do so that day. And way above the industry standard of 15 minutes.

After this we had lunch and made out way back to port on the way seeing numerous humpbacks breaching and crashing around as well as a baby one practising with its mother, what a perfect end to an amazing day!!

We made it back to our campsite the place still rocking. We had an early night and slept very well.

We have photos but they are on a cd, so when we get them onto the hard drive we will put them up.

We are off to relax on the beach for a bit today...Tomorrow....National Park!

David and Holly