Coral Bay Magic

We're still in Coral Bay, a wee town on the Ningaloo Reef. Today we had even better snorkelling and swimming with the fishies! We went on a 6-hour "nature tour" that was worth every penny.

First off, we went snorkelling with a giant manta ray (in the wild rather than in some aquarium!)...Iff reckons she was about 13 feet across. She was huge, gorgeous, so graceful and seemingly unconcerned about the 8 of us trailing her from a respectful distance. It was brilliant. Then we searched for humpback whales but couldn't see any. We did see a lovely dolphin, though, so that's ok. Next we snorkelled in some lovely, calm waters full of corals and fish. We spotted a starfish, and I looked out for eels and sea snakes but luckily didn't see any! We then went to a shallow area known as a turtle sanctuary. We just watched from the boat to see what was around. Right away we saw two dugongs: a mother and baby! I squealed of course. Dugongs are basically manatees with whale tales rather than paddle tales. They're big, fat vegetarians who eat sea grass (hence their common name, sea cows), and we were absolutely thrilled to see them in the wild like that. They surfaced several times to breathe, quite close to our boat, but then they decided to swim off. While in the turtle sanctuary, we also saw a big green turtle and a few rays. It was really lovely. Next up we snorkelled around a fish cleaning station, where there was a big reef shark (not huge, Iff reckons, but it sure looked like a big shark to me) and various other fish getting cleaned. It's so amazing that these places exist where fish call a truce and help each other out rather than hunt each other! The water was really cold there, but it was thrilling to see all the colourful corals and fish and the shark. After that, we headed on back to dry land. Such a magical experience!

We're getting the hang of snorkelling and are working up to whale sharks (first small fish, then bigger fish, a shark and a giant manta ray). One of the girls on our tour today did a whale shark snorkelling tour recently and saw 10 whale sharks, 8 of which she snorkelled with! Here's hoping we have an experience like that, but then again I'll be happy if we see just 1 whale shark. We shall see...