Day 34 Whale Sharks

Today we took a tour out to swim with the whale sharks on a catamaran. The company was called Ningaloo Discovery.
We had to wake up really early to catch the bus waiting for us at the front of the park. We stopped at a few other parks to pick up some other people along the way. We drove for about an hour until we arrived at the Tantabiddi boat ramp. At the boat ramp we waited for our tender to arrive. The tender could only carry about 4 or 5 people at a time. We were on the third ride out to a catamaran called the 'Windcheetah'.
Once on board they gave us a rundown of the safety instructions and the whale shark regulations. We were only allowed to swim within 3 to 4 metres of them and not get in front of them.
Our first stop was just a small stop to make sure our gear worked and everyone was a confident swimmer. Then the driver got a call from a spotter plane saying that there was a whale shark nearby. The sight was amazing! It was a huge, beautiful creature. They are the biggest fish in the world. It is so sad that whale sharks are endangered because the Chinese and the Japanese have been cutting off their fins for shark fin soup.
Fo most of the day we were stopping at whale sharks to swim around them. A few of them dived but there was always another one nearby.
After we had all finished swimming with the whale sharks we headed back closer to shore. We had one more stop which was just a snorkel over the reef. I saw lots of different types of fish, turtles, stingrays, and starfish. Sadly we didn't spot any dugongs.
On the way back to the boat ramp the crew threw a boom net over the back of the boat, and we were allowed to go out and jump on the net as the boat was coming into shore. It was very hard to hang on to the rope but it was very fun and enjoyable.
While we were heading back to our caravan park we were all very tired and exhausted. Tomorrow we will still be in Exmouth but it will be more of a relaxing day.Read more