We had planned our trip to Ningaloo Reef for April, the start of the whale shark season. But ten days before arriving in Exmouth we were nervously watching the nightly news as Cyclone Glenda was heading towards the area. Exmouth was on ‘Blue Alert’ and each day the cyclone
increased in strength to a category five. Thankfully the cyclone missed Exmouth.Then several days later another cyclone formed. This one was due to hit Exmouth the day before we arrived! Fortunately, this one fizzled out and turned into a rain depression, allowing us to fly into Exmouth. But what was the diving gong to be like after two cyclones in the area?
Arriving in Exmouth the sky was cloudy, but there wasn’t a breath of wind. We headed to the Exmouth Diving Centre and spoke to the owner Kristin Anderson, who informed us that they were still diving. She also added that they often get cyclones in February and March, but most have little impact on the town or the diving.
The next morning found us heading out to the Muiron Islands. Exmouth Diving Centre run two large and very comfortable dive boats daily, one to the whale sharks and the other to the reef and Muiron Islands. They also have a shop in Coral Bay, at the southern end of Ningaloo and run two more boats to the whale sharks and the reef.
The Muiron Islands are located north of Ningaloo Reef and are actually outside the marine park. A nesting site for turtles, the islands are surrounded by lovely coral reefs. It takes over an hour to reach the islands from the Exmouth Boat Harbour, and on the way out we were constantly being offered refreshments and snacks by the friendly staff.
With light winds and a small swell, and even bluish water, it looked like the cyclones had had little effect on the diving conditions. We anchored off South Muiron Island for a dive at Fraggle Rock.
The water temperature was a warm 27C and the visibility around 8m, not the best but still acceptable. This is a wonderful diving site, rocky reef covered in thick hard and soft coral and with abundance marine life. The reef is undercut with ledges and crevasses, and being only 14m deep allowed for plenty of bottom time.
We were interested to compare Ningaloo diving to the Great Barrier Reef, and were just amazed by the variety and the prolific numbers of fish. We encountered numerous rock cod, wrasse, parrotfish, sweetlips, angelfish, butterflyfish, surgeonfish, goatfish and anemonefish, including many species we had never seen before. This was no poor second cousin to the Great Barrier Reef.
Under one ledge a large tasselled wobbegong rested, while on the sand sat a huge black blotched stingray. The highlight was a large bommie cut by many ledges. Here the fish we
re
very abundant with schools of squirrelfish, cardinalfish and sweetlips. We
spotted a large leopard moray eel surrounded by hinge beaked shrimp and cleaner
shrimp, while a large groper poked its head out of another hole. We were very
impressed with all the marine life we encountered, but photography was a bit of
a challenge as a surge was stirring up the sand.Between dives we had the most amazing lunch, a smorgasbord of cold meats, salads and breads. Each day we dived with the Exmouth Diving Centre the lunches and snacks were a highlight. Our second dive was at Whale Bone, another pretty reef with loads of fish. The depth was only 13m, and diving for over an hour we saw anemonefish, nudibranchs, sea stars, hawkfish, butterflyfish, wrasse, boxfish and a school of lined catfish. In the surgy conditions we concentrated on close-ups, finding a pretty leopard blenny and a very curious mantis shrimp.
The following day we were whale sharking. At the start of the whale shark season, which runs from late March to the end of July, the sharks can be a bit skitish. For the previous few days the Exmouth Diving Centre hadn’t been able to get snorkellers on any whale sharks. Fortunately, they have a policy that you get a repeat tour if no whale sharks are seen.
After a 7am start we quickly loaded the gear into the dive centre bus and trailer, and headed to the western side of North West Cape. On the way Jane, our guide for the day, ran through the whale shark regulations and the procedures we would follow.
The Department of Conservation and Land Management have set strict guidelines for snorkelling with whale sharks to ensure that the sharks are not interfered with and that you get a long interaction time. Snorkellers are not allowed within 3m of the shark, and when swimming you must stay behind the shark’s pectoral fin. Definitely no touching, no flash photography and if the shark comes towards you it is up to you to get out of its way. Also you are not allowed to swim above or under the shark, as it may make it dive.
We arrived at the boat ramp at Tantabiddi and transferred the gear onto the boat. We had a full load of 18 divers plus crew. Each boat is only allowed ten divers in the water with a shark, a guide and nine customers, so the group was divided into two.
As the spotter plane doesn’t get into the air until 10am we had a chance to do a reef dive, before spending the rest of the day with the whale sharks. The seas were a little rough on the outer reef, but we had a nice dive at Three Fins. The reef here was very pretty, lots of hard and soft coral and abundant reef fish. The visibility was also a lot better, around 12m and thankfully no surge. Exploring the reef we found ledges full of shrimps and some lovely tomato rock cod and coral rock cod. Pelagic fish were cruising the reef edge, including trevally and surgeonfish.
It was then time to search for whale sharks, but it was to be a frustrating search today. A few sharks were seen and one boat even got some snorkellers in with one shark. However, the sharks kept diving and were not interested in playing today. Throughout the day the water all around us was boiling with fish and birds, so there was no shortage of action. We even briefly snorkelled with a large manta ray. It was a long and tiring day, but still very enjoyable just being out on the water with so much happening.
The next day the weather was brilliant, calm and warm with light winds. We were booked to do some reef dives in Lighthouse Bay, which is actually inside the reef at the top of North West Cape. The diving in Lighthouse Bay is an interesting mixture of reef and ‘muck’ diving, and you never know what you might find. The first site we dived was Blizzard Ridge, not much coral but fantastic marine life.
The site is just a step in the limestone reef from 12m to 14m. The visibility was around 10m, and thankfully there was no surge. As soon as we entered the water we were surrounded by a school of trevally. On the bottom we quickly spotted lionfish, sweetlips, batfish, angelfish, barracuda and several species of rock cod laying on the bottom.
Masses of fish were constantly swimming up and down this small ledge, but some of the best marine life was under the ledge. Here we found tasselled wobbegongs, moray eels, coral rock cod, squirrelfish, cardinalfish, hawkfish, nudibranchs, sea stars, octopus and lots of sailfin catfish. There was just so much marine life to photograph that we ended up only exploring a small section of the ledge, missing the white tip reef sharks, olive sea snakes and stingrays the other divers encountered.
Our second dive was at Gulliver’s, a site with much more coral and even more fish life. As with all the dive sites in Lighthouse Bay this is a limestone reef jutting out of the sandy bottom. We saw similar fish life to Blizzard Ridge, but more of it, including schools of yellow lined snapper, trevally and many-lined sweetlip. Two large octopus were a highlight, as they climbed around the reef peering at us taking photos.
Towards the end of the dive
we
encountered a white tip reef shark resting on the sand. The crew had mentioned
that this was a good place to see manta rays, as they visit the cleaner wrasse
station. Unfortunately we didn’t see a manta, but were lucky enough to sight a
grey reef shark hovering over the reef while getting serviced by the cleaner
wrasse.The following day the weather kept on improving, warm, sunny and no wind. We explored the Cape Range National Park in the morning, a magical place with colourful canyons and incredible rock formations, rising up to 300m above the surrounding desert. In the afternoon we were booked in to do Exmouth’s most famous dive site, the Navy Pier.
We had heard nothing but good reports about the Navy Pier, which has been rated as one of the best dive sites in the world. The pier is used to supply the nearby Harold E Holt Naval Communication Station and is off limits to the public, however Exmouth Diving Centre have special permission to take dives to marvel at all the marine life under the pier.
The pier is only around 200m long with a T section at the end. The action started as soon as we jumped in the water, with a school of big eye trevally swarming around us as we descended. It is only 13m deep under the pier, and with 12m visibility we could see a forest of steel pylons and masses of fish. All around us were wrasse, tuskfish, rock cod, parrotfish, pufferfish, batfish, coral trout, sweetlip, angelfish, toadfish, surgeonfish, catfish, bream and many, many more species.
For the next hour we moved slowly from pylon to pylon, photographing estuary gropers, moray eels, nudibranchs, bald chin tuskfish, zebra lionfish, crocodilefish, scorpionfish, tasselled wobbegongs, white tip reef sharks and a huge Queensland groper. We even found a very cute northern frogfish and a very rare northern wobbegong. The highlight were two bizarre looking fish that we had never seen before, later identified by Rudie Kuiter as bearded velvetfish, and the first time the species had ever been photographed.
The next day was our final day of diving and we were hoping to see our whale sharks. We probably would have gone home happy without seeing one after the fantastic dives in Lighthouse Bay, the Muiron Islands and the Navy Pier, but the whale sharks would definitely be the icing on the cake.
We first had a dive at Central Station, another wonderful dive on a sloping reef with lots of bommies. The visibility was improving each day, now 15m, which is about average for Ningaloo Reef, though over winter it can be 30m.
We saw several white tip reef sharks resting on the bottom and under the ledges. Also under the ledges were lots of shrimps, rock cod, squirrelfish and the ever present tasselled wobbegongs. The fish were again impressive, with a school of many-lined snapper, mackerel, fusiliers and quite a few orange anemonefish. We even got to photograph two large loggerhead turtles. On the way back to the boat we heard the diver recall signal. A whale shark had been spotted.
Everyone quickly got back to the boat and we headed out to sea. One of the other boats was already with the shark, but the operators work together to share the whale sharks, so we waited nearby for our chance with the shark.
We got our snorkelling gear ready, even though we were in group two. Our first group then got the nod and jumped in. We waited patiently, counting down the minutes, hoping the shark would not dive. Then it was go, go, go!
We piled into the water and swam over to the spotter as quickly as possible, staring into the water for a view of the shark. Then it suddenly appeared, swimming straight towards us, a gentle giant, or rather a small gentle giant, as the shark was only around 4m long.
As the shark swam past we started to swim beside it, clicking off photos. We were soon finning very hard to keep up. We only had five minutes with the shark, but it was a thrilling experience and very exhausting. Back on the boat there were smiles all round.
For the next few hours we had five more swims with this and another small whale shark. We were also fortunate enough to have Brad Norman on our boat, a marine biologist who has been studying whale sharks for the past decade. He was collecting plankton samples to see what the sharks were eating and also trying to measure the sharks.
It was a lot of fun snorkelling with the whale sharks, but hard work, especially trying to take photos. The visibility was a little soupy with so much plankton on the surface and framing shots was difficult at times, especially when you had the perfect shot lined up and another snorkeller would swim straight in front of you or even worse the whale shark would turn towards you, and you would find yourself frantically trying to get out of its way!
Our day with the whale sharks ended all too quickly, but topped off a wonderful week of diving the amazing Ningaloo Reef Marine Park.