It was a little swelly first thing this morning, so we postponed our scuba dive and snorkeled on the reef instead. The Ningaloo Reef put on great snorkeling with all manner of reef fishes from tiny to huge. Afterward, we headed south towards where the whale sharks have been over the past few days and it wasn't long until we were on our first whale shark of the day.
We ended swimming with six different whale sharks ranging in size from about 3.5m - 8m! We even swam with Chompy, a returning whale shark who is missing most of its dorsal fin thanks to an attack several years ago.
A couple of the whale sharks were happily sucking down plankton with their mouths wide open and heads bobbing. Almost all of them were swimming pretty slowly today which made keeping up with them a whole lot easier after we'd been doing it a while.
We has awesome, long swims on almost every drop with every whale shark and, boy, were we tired by the time we left the whale sharks to head home!
On the way back, we stopped for a relaxing snorkel on the reef and the scuba divers jumped into much calmer and clearer conditions than we'd seen in the morning. Central Station was buzzing with parrotfish, scorpionfish, threadfin pearl perch, blue spotted lagoon rays, octopus, white tip reef sharks, mantis shrimp, convict surgeonfish, cardinalfish and tons more.
WATER TEMP: 26C
VISIBILITY: 10-12m
CURRENT: none
SURGE: mild
DEPTH: 17m
An awesome day out on the Ningaloo Reef!
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