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Another fabulous day here in Exmouth out on the Ningaloo Reef on our Whale Shark Adventure!
We started with a great snorkel on Central Station and saw all of our usual favourites: turtles, sharks, blue spotted stingrays, parrotfish, stars & stripes puffers, boxfish, convict surgeons, trevally, threadfin pearl perch...and MANTA RAYS! It doesn't matter how many times we see these guys, we always get excited!
Again today we had multiple whale sharks and multiple swims with each one. Mostly they were pretty slow and they let us stay for quite a while. One of them was gliding up and down from the surface to about 10 meters below us and back up again, over and over - clearly feeding and enjoying the abundant food source while totally ignoring us. We spent a lot of time in the water with the big guys today!
We also had more humpback whales as we cruised along the back of the reef. Their plumes of exhalations were enormous and hung in the air for ages. Wonderful!
A bit breezy this morning and a good sized swell coming in, so we did not do a scuba dive today but did have a great snorkel first thing. Always so much to see: turtles, rays, parrotfish, barracuda, white tip reef sharks, fusiliers, sweetlips. Great way to start our day!
The whale sharks today were wonderful again. We swam with three different whale sharks and the first two were 6-7m each. They got progressively slower as we swam with them...the first couple of drops on the first shark got our blood pumping a little bit! By our last drop on the third whale shark - by far the smallest one - it seemed the whale sharks had figured out that we weren't nearly as quick as they were and he was nice and slow, so we barely had to fin at all! What a fantastic day again!!
Today is the first day of 2011 with the humpback whales!! They were cruising north on their annual migration and we saw them in the morning as we headed south for our whale sharks. At the end of our day several groups of humpbacks accompanied us almost the whole way back. Beautiful to watch them with the backdrop of the Nor'West Cape behind them.
Central Station started our Whale Shark Adventure off with a bang today. Stacks of fish everywhere we looked, some reef sharks, a turtle and manta rays! Yay!! We love manta rays! We saw two swimming along the reef during our scuba dive and the snorkelers had another one that they were able to hang out with in the shallows.
WATER TEMP: 27C
VISIBILITY: 6-9m
CURRENT: none
SURGE: none
DEPTH: 17m
We found our first whale shark well before noon again today and swam our little hearts out. We had a BIG 8m whale shark who was awesome to watch: we were in the water looking towards where we knew he was but couldn't really see him and then this enormous mouth started to appear and all of a sudden BAM there was this huge fish!
It's a bit mind-blowing how something so large and something you know is right there can be virtually invisible like that.
Such a great day with our mantas, multiple whale sharks, great people, yummy food, fantastic snorkeling and postcard perfect weather!
Labyrinth was fantastic today! One of our groups saw two manta rays as they were coming down the mooring line - nice way to start a dive! There are almost solid walls of baitfish in several spots along the site and tuna, mackerel, trevally, coral trout and rankin cods were shooting through gobbling snacks and scattering the glittering fish everywhere for a few seconds before they reformed. And turtles. Too many to count and almost all of them very mellow and willing to let divers get up close for some great shots. One turtle swam with me for 15 minutes, it was amazing!
WATER TEMP: 27C
VISIBILITY: 15m
CURRENT: none
SURGE: very slight
DEPTH: 15m
Blizzard Ridge didn't have the schools of baitfish, but had huge schools of slightly larger (but still juvenile) snapper, fusiliers and sea perch. The fish were packed so densely you couldn't see another diver only 2m away! Wobbegongs, white tip reef sharks, olive sea snakes, goatfish, batfish, coral cods, pairs of lionfish, moray eels of all sizes and a showoff octopus putting on a very cool display - great time underwater!
WATER TEMP: 27C
VISIBILITY: 10-15m
CURRENT: none
SURGE: none
DEPTH: 15m
We saw a few dolphins on the way out and on the way back, too!
Another fabulous day out whale sharking here in Exmouth! No wind, calm seas, warm water and plenty of marine life!
We started with a dive at Central Station with turtles, white tip reef sharks, blue spotted lagoon rays, a big school of thread fin pearl perch, parrotfish, swarms of convict surgeons, a tawny nurse shark and tons more. The site was nice an active today!
DEPTH: 17m
TEMP: 27C
VIZ: 6-8
SURGE: none
CURRENT: very mild
We found our first whale shark pretty early and he was nice and slow to ease us into the day. We had multiple drops with him before finding two more sharks for more and more drops! One of our sharks was accompanied by about a zillion tiny to midsize fish swimming frantically under his chi in and all of the sharks had suckerfish under their bellies.
It was a very good day with beautiful conditions!
Central Station has cleared up a bit and more fish are moving in, too. We had great white tip reef sharks, rankin cods, coral trouts, threadfin pearl perch, stars & stripes pufferfish and a gorgeous schools of batfish with yellow fins circling in the blue water just above the reef. Octopus, nudibranchs and eels were abundant and a lone frogfish peered out at us from his hidey hole on the bottom edge of a ledge.
WATER TEMP: 28C
VISIBILITY: 6-9m
CURRENT: none
SURGE: none
DEPTH: 17m
It was a gorgeous day to be out on the ocean and it's a good thing because the whale sharks were late to pop up today! When they finally did, we hopped in for lots of good swims. They weren't fast today so it was easy to take a lot of time to watch the effortless movement through the water and most were surprised at how tired they were when we got back on the boat all tired after swimming!
Master Chompy, one of our favourite returning whale sharks, put in an appearance and let us swim pretty much forever with him. He's a very mellow & relaxed whale shark!
A good start to the big Easter weekend :)
Congratulations to our eight newest PADI Open Water divers!
They had an awesome dive course with two dives out at the Muiron Islands and two dives in Lighthouse Bay - all four dives were filled with so many different sea creatures there wasn't enough room in the log books to record them all!
One of our students has fallen so in love with diving with us here on the Ningaloo Reef that she's committed to several months of diving every day and training hard to achieve her PADI Dive Master certification - way to go, Constance!!
Thanks to Andreas for sending us this great group shot of Exmouth Diving Centre's newest PADI Open Water Divers - we hope you all get to dive again very soon!
You know it's going to be a good diving day when you are on the way to the dive sites and bottlenosed dolphins are leaping 20' into the air in your wake!
Gulliver's was hopping with shark action today - white tip reefies everywhere we looked and wobbegongs trying to pretend they were rocks. Turtles - hawksbills and greens - were popping up on the surface, swimming alongside the divers and giving themselves a good scratch on the reef. A couple of turtles were snacking away on some of the (overly) abundant red bell jellyfish. Barracuda, trevally, 6 banded angelfish, pink anemonefish, batfish, hawkfish, neon damsels and tons of gobies were just some of the fishes we enjoyed. Super dive!
WATER TEMP: 27C
VISIBILITY: 10-15m
CURRENT: none
SURGE: none
DEPTH: 14m
Blizzard Ridge was also full of good stuff. The giant moray eel made an appearance and swam along for about 30m before weaving his way through some gaps in the reef. The schools of glassfish and baitfish are starting to increase and there was some feeding action by a few predator fish. Looks like the Emperor Angelfish have been busy - there were heaps of psychedelic coloured juveniles flitted about as well as a few adults. Cutest juvenile firefish with the most delicate fringe on his fins. Mating nudibranchs. More wobbies, white tips and turtles plus all of the usual schools of perch, sea pike, bullseyes and clouds of anthias. We were all smiling ear to ear and talking over one another about the cool stuff we found on this dive!
WATER TEMP: 27C
VISIBILITY: 12-15m
CURRENT: none
SURGE: none
DEPTH: 14m
Fabulous day with the whale sharks today!
We started with a stop on the Ningaloo Reef for some diving and snorkeling at Central Station. There was a lot of action to see with coral trout, estuary cod, turtles, white tip reef sharks, raccoon butterflyfish, strawberry cod, crocodilefish, blue spotted rays, nudibranchs, sailfin catfish, parrotfish, long fin bannerfish and so much more!
WATER TEMP: 28C
VISIBILITY: 3-8m
CURRENT: none
SURGE: none
DEPTH: 18m
The whale sharks were super cooperative today and we once again had so many drops and swam so much that everyone was too tired to do any more! We swam with three different sharks ranging in size from 3.5 - 7m and all of them let us spend a lot of time with them. A couple of them were very curious and kept doing little circles around us and coming right up to the boat - we love it when they pay attention to us!
Stunner of a day!
We started in crystal blue, flat water at Central Station for an awesome dive and snorkel. White tip reef sharks, grey reef sharks, turtles, more fish than we could count, sting rays and octopus. A big leopard ray met us right at the bottom near the mooring and his spots were amazing! Later in the dive a huge cowtail ray rested half buried in sand while divers swam up nice and close. Just such an excellent site today!
WATER TEMP: 26C
VISIBILITY: 20-25+m
CURRENT: none
SURGE: none
DEPTH: 17m
And the whale sharks were amazing, too. We swam with three today and had so many swims with them that we were all too exhausted to do any more! Our favourite whale shark today was actively feeding and standing on his tail. He would come right up to the back of the boat, mouth opening and closing, sucking down plankton for all he was worth! He even nose-bumped the marlin board and boat several times. Awesome doesn't even begin to describe our time with the whale sharks today, but it will have to do!
