Swimming With Sharks

After being lucky enough to grab the last couple of spots on a whale shark tour, probably the only two spots in any tour group for a couple of weeks, we found ourselves at 6pm, the night before a 7am start, looking for someone to look after Leroy for the day.

All dog sitters in Exmouth were either full or no longer offered any service or were away. As usual, Sarah worked her magic and like a fairy waving her wand someone put up their hand, saying they'd be happy to have him all day from 6.30am.

Having left Leroy with Colleen, an obvious dog lover, we grabbed a quick breakfast at our B&B and got picked up in a minibus by Katia and Lauren from Ningaloo Discovery.

These young women both had an infectious enthusiasm for the Ningaloo Reef and its staggering array of marine life. We picked up another 16 passengers and headed out to Tantabiddi boat ramp on Yardie Creek Road where we met the last three customers of our tour and the 21 of us were ferried, in two tranches, to our boat for the day, The Investigator. 

Our skipper, Steve, together with Katia, Lauren, Lauren's twin sister and a couple of other helpers soon got us heading out towards the reef. En route we were allocated a wetsuit, flippers, snorkel and mask each and told that we would test these out with a short snorkel before we reached the other side of the reef, where the whale sharks are.

Sarah assumed that the first 'test' snorkel was optional and confidently stated that thanks, but she would wait until we were swimming with the whale sharks before she got in the water. The crew weren't having a bar of that and although they stopped short of throwing Sarah in, they were persuasive enough that in she went, along with the rest of us. I think Steve promised her a second, dry, wetsuit for the whale shark swim.

We were only in the water for a few minutes before we climbed back on board and headed out past the reef. It really didn't take long, as the reef is so close to shore. On the way, Lauren gave us all a comprehensive instruction on the whale sharks, their physiology, habitat, diet and the protocols for swimming with them (stay at least 3m away and on no account touch them) before warning us that it might be a couple of hours before we saw anything.

We were split into two groups and it was explained to us that once a whale shark was sighted, the skipper would pilot us to the best spot for group A to disembark before moving the boat to drop off group B. As soon as group A was in the water, they were to follow Lauren's directions as to where to line up in the water, which direction to face and then to follow any further instructions.

I assumed we would be sitting around for a while and so wasn't really paying attention, so I was a bit surprised when no more than 30 seconds later the shout went up for group A to be ready to jump off the back of the boat within the next 20 seconds.

We all jumped into the water, in what was a much more orderly fashion than I would have thought possible.  Still pretty clueless, I followed in the general direction of the rest of the group, while trying to get our recently acquired GoPro to switch on, clearing the water out of my mask, reattaching my flipper which had come loose and then confirming that I had no idea where I was supposed to be, or what direction I should be facing. I didn't want to give up just yet, so submersed my head and lo and behold, no more than a couple of meters in front of me, was the most majestic whale shark, striped and spotted just like in the brochures, a huge fish swimming languidly just below the surface of the ocean, with my view not spoiled by any of the rest of our group (who were all presumably where they'd been told to be). Although these massive fish swim slowly, it's still faster than most of the group, so it quickly left us behind as it headed for group B who were now in the water, and the boat came back to pick us up. These whale sharks have very vivid markings, comprising white spots and faint lines. Although the literature describes the white spots as random, they look to me like they lie in straight horizontal and vertical lines  - a bit like having a giant chessboard where most of the squares have a white spot but some are left blank. Perhaps you can understand what I mean from the still taken from my 3 second GoPro video (I said I was struggling to get everything to work).

A quick roll call when back on board established that about half the group had seen the whale shark, but I'm confident I had by far the best view of it.

We picked up group B, which had also got good views, and then the whale shark dived and we went off to look for another fish.

It's actually a bit more sophisticated than just looking for a big fish. The tour groups have spotter planes in constant radio contact with the boats. Because the whale sharks generally swim close to the surface, the planes spot them quite effectively. The boat skippers are experts at what they do and once they have details of the location and heading of the whale sharks are adept at dropping the groups accurately in the path of the fish. The swim guides, like Lauren, have an incredibly difficult job to do to make sure all their charges are in the water, all safe, and in the correct location, but they do it with aplomb. On our boat, Katia was the photographer and she was always where she needed to be to get the best shots.

Over the course of the day we saw numerous whale sharks. Sarah and I both called it a day with the swimming after we'd had a few good close up experiences. It was almost as awesome watching the whale sharks from the upper boat deck. That spot also provided the best spot to see the other attractions on the day. We were lucky enough to be escorted by a pod of frolicking dolphins for some of the way, we saw numerous humpback whales, often in pairs, as well as a leopard shark, tiger shark and a large sea snake.

We were provided with an impressive lunch of fresh salads and meats etc, as well as a celebratory glass of bubbles at the end of the day.

Everyone disembarked with big smiles on their faces and an inner sense of awe and humility at having witnessed some of natures aquatic wonders. Definitely a memory to savour.