During my time here at Exmouth I have been fortunate enough to get out for a few dives on Ningaloo Reef. Ningaloo is one of the world largest fringing reefs with the outer reef coming in as close as 100 m from shore. Although the reef is closer to shore than the GBR the area of coastline is quite remote with only a couple small townships servicing the reef, namely Exmouth and the small coastal village, Coral Bay. It is a beautiful place where the desert meets the sea.
During my time up here I was lucky enough to catch up with Sacha Dench. Sacha is a champion freediver and marine conservationist; she was on holidays from her job with Coastcare and Landcare. Her and two friends, James and Stu came up camping with their boat, and we took it out for a couple days diving. Sacha used my video camera and got some footage for her work and got some footage of me shooting stills.
One of the sites we dived was a manta ray cleaning station, where we had two mantas that cruised over our heads. We also dived some other nice sites along the reef, although the coral diversity and colour is down from that of the GBR, the fish life more than makes up for it! With much of the reef in no-take marine park zones the fish life at some spots is incredible, along with a few green turtles and sea snakes. It was particularly scenic cruising along the outer reef watching the desert shoreline and blue water with lots of humpback whales nearby on their migration north
During this week I also got out for another day with the whale sharks. This time it was time for me to use the stereo video cameras on my own. These stereo video cameras are a new and very accurate may of measuring fish and other marine life, developed by Dr Euan Harvey at UWA. This is George Shedrawi’s project for ECOCEAN and the first time this method has been used on whale sharks. This gives an accuracy of <1% and will allow them to calculate growth rates on the sharks that are re sighted and measured with this technique. So far only 12 sharks have been measured this way and these measurements are compared to estimates from experienced and inexperienced observers. Showing how wrong we can be when estimating sizes and distances underwater.
This week we had six Earthwatch volunteers, these guys were great and such a tremendous help in uploading and organising images for the whaleshark.org database. It is great to see people coming together on their holidays and using their time for helping organisations such as ECOCEAN. Their enthusiasm was great and we all got along very well.
After spending a few extra days with George and Helen we packed up and cleaned the house and loaded the cars up with gear. I offered to drive the 4WD back to Perth taking a couple days, staying overnight at Kalbarri. It was great to cruise down the coast at my own pace and check out the remote landscapes and coastline that make WA so special. I came back to Fremantle to stay another night with Shannon Conway before my 1am flight to Bali via Singapore. So my next post will be from Indonesia.
