Day 58 – Sun, 5 Sep at Coral Bay

I woke this morning and received a number of calls from my family wishing me a happy Fathers Day. I suggested to Katie that as a present all the kids could chip in and pay for my holiday. She said that she would get back to me on that in a couple of weeks. I don't think I should hold my breath - well that was relevant given what I was doing today.

In addition to that the day was a WOW, WOW, WOW, WOW day. I booked myself onto the Ningaloo Reef Dive boat for a snorkelling trip. At Coral Bay there are a number of snorkelling tours, but I was glad that I joined this group, because they were a terrific bunch of guys, friendly, helpful, and very professional. I guess you need to be if you are taking people out diving. There were 5 crew and 8 customers (4 diving,  4 snorkelling) on a boat designed for 30 people.

The first dive site was a snorkel over the reef from about 2-3m of water across the outer reef into water 10-12m. At this site there was a shark cleaning site. We saw about 6 reef sharks (WOW) getting a “clean”. You see the current is such that the sharks can stop swimming and they won’t drown, they open their jaws and small fish swim in and out and clean their teeth – cool.

We snorkelled around the reef for about 1 & 1/2 hours. One of the crew took us initially to see the sharks and left us to do our own thing. Prior to entering the water they gave us all the necessary hand signals for emergencies, etc as well as recommended snorkelling areas. The reef here as you would expect was far better then closer to shore. As it would be at both sites for the day. There were 100’s of different types of coral, with far more colour evident then inshore. Also 100’s of types of marine life. Just magical.

The reef is a fringing reef, which I understand is a reef that is connected to shore, unlike out east which is a barrier reef. The wind dropped through the day and the water was calm and clear. Fabulous.

We moved sites and next up was hopefully a swim with a giant manta ray. They have a spotter plane so they were given directions to a sighting. The instructions were that the dive master would enter the water first, ensure that it was a manta, then we would enter the water quietly, and then hopefully keep up. The manta can swim exceptionally fast.

The manta ray is part of the shark family, with muscle and cartilage the same as a shark, with a dorsal fin but in the shape of a ray. It has a tail like a ray but no barb, and feed on plankton. Wonderful for swimming with if you can keep up.

So we all hit the water and the first sighting is just amazing. It was only a smaller one, about 2m wing span. I has trailing off its right wing when it turned towards me in an upward direction. We had been told to just hang in the water and let it do its thing. Well it passed in front and under me within about 2m (2nd WOW) and then the chase was on.

I thought after about 6-7 minutes of this that I would soon need to have some R&R (rescue & resuscitation), swimming flat out, trying to keep the dive master in sight and where the bloody hell was that manta. Then we were following another one, about 3.5m wing span and she (yep we knew how to determine the sex, and besides I was told later that is was a she) was just feeding and enjoying herself.

We followed her for about 20 minutes as she would head in one direction and then turn 180 and head back again, time and time again – strip feeding. After a while the dive master told us we could dive down to her one at a time, And WOW (3rd) when I did this I was only about a metre from her and over the course of a couple of dives I was able to look her in the eye, well one of them the other was about a half a metre away on the other side of her flat head.

The dive master called it a dive, and we were picked up and the smiles were on everyone’s dial. Just a tremendous dive with such massive, but gentle creatures. The skipper said that he had sighted a couple of whales whilst we were having our fun so he headed after them for a little lunch time enjoyment.

We sat having lunch on the upper deck whilst two hump backs slowly cruised around us breaching and giving tail flicks. At times we were less than 50m from them as they would change direction and swim towards us and then away. An unexpected pleasure.

After lunch we headed for our final dive site, about 1/2 hour travel S of our current position. On arrival we went through the same briefing session and into the water. We swam along a wall, well cliff of coral possibly 10m tall then around and back through trenches into 2-3m of water. On the snorkel we had our 4th WOW, swimming with 3 green turtles. One just let us swim along with it as it was just cruising. The other two led us on a chase through the coral.

So I am sitting here now writing this post early as I know it is going to be an early to bed night – I am exhausted. But what a day, a Father’s Day I’ll never forget.

PS. Only a couple of photos made it tonight, no underwater camera and the one I have has finally packed it in.