Tuesday, 13 May--whalesharks!

This is it. The moment you've been waiting for! At least, that's what we were telling ourselves when the alarm went off. It was an early start. 7:15 am at Ningaloo Reef Dreaming for a relaxed day on the boat, and the opportunity to swim with the Whale Sharks.

For those of you who haven't seen the entire Jacques Cousteau collection, whale sharks are the world's largest fish and grow up to 18m in length (that's 60 feet for those of you in North America). That's a little over 3 Dodge Durango SUV's end to end. Luckily for us, and for the other folks forking out a substantial chunk of cash for the opportunity, these sharks are also pretty much vegetarians, living on Krill and stuff unlucky enough to get caught in the grill. Mouth. I mean mouth.

So we were prepared that we were going to be in the open ocean with a giant shark. That's what we and thousands of other people come to Exmouth for. What we weren't prepared for was commando snorkelling.

The Whale Sharks have migration patterns that are mostly unknown, and protected by legisltation. We were limited to swimming with the whalesharks for 60 minutes, with no more than 10 people in the water at any one time, not closer than 3m, no swimming in front of the shark, etc. etc. In order for everyone to get their turn at snorkelling with the whalesharks, we were warned that we must be ready to jump in at anytime, and exit the water with military precision (which is difficult wearing a snorkel and fins).

To give us an opportunity to practice, we first went to the reef where we did a deep sea snorkel. This was supposed to be a relaxed swim to get used to snorkelling near the reef. What we weren't prepared for was 3 meter swell, and the waves breaking over the reef. Eventually the rocking of the ocean and the crashing waves left even the most hardy swimmers sea-sick. We returned to the boat, green at the gills, and not feeling any more prepared.

Shortly after our practice snorkel they sent up a spotter plane, and they almost immediately spotted a whaleshark. He was 6 m long, but swimming too close to the reef for the boat to safely drop us. After seeing the boat's crew struggle to keep up in the crashing surf, we were glad that they decided it was too rough for us tourists (there's no guarantees--they are a lot less worried about lawsuits here so I thought they might drop us in anyway--after all we signed a waiver). Meanwhile, 50% of the passengers came up with this clever technique to lure the shark away from the reef -- gather at the rail, and offer the morning's (slightly used) breakfast as an enticement. Surprisingly, he declined to join us.

While they searched for another whaleshark, we had a hurried lunch. During the second bite of my sandwich they shouted, "In the water in 3 minutes! group A ready". Swallowing my sandwich whole, I felt even more seasick. Suddenly we were herded into the water like lemmings over a cliff...where was it? Then out of the blue, the slow graceful movements of two ocean rays. Gorgeous! More like flight than swimming, they swooped and glided around us, first right side up, then upside down, showing us their 6 foot wingspan and gills from the bottom.

The boat swings around to pick us up,"Hurry up, on board, move to the back, c'mon, c'mon!"
We are heading towards another whaleshark. This one looks promising. The spotters jump in the water and begin swimming along side the whaleshark with their arm raised. "Group B ready we take our positions, and jump. Immediatley swimming towards the spotter, looking for the raised arm. Then a glimpse of something.

It's huge. I mean, without the boat, being in the water with this fish is like getting out of the jeep on an African safari to stroll 10 feet from a giraffe. And it looked so lazy and relaxed -- just a casual swish of its tail and no matter how fast I snorkelled, there was no way to keep up. We tried, until my thigh cramped and I almost swam through somebody else's vomit (did we mention that it was pretty rough water?), but all too soon, he was out of sight. Then the boat came around, we hauled ourselves out, they raced ahead of the shark and dropped us back in for another go.

It was on the third entry that it happened. I was snorkelling towards the spotter, planning to head down the other side of the shark, when he took a lazy 10 degree turn and when I looked back in the water...I was staring straight into a 6 foot wide mouth. Now, I know he wasn't planning to hunt me down or anything, but I could see that if I happened to get sucked in, it might just be me and Jonah for the next few months. I quickly vacated that slightly warmer, yellower patch of sea, and barely got any pictures at all on that pass. One that I did get, though, has Kristin just visible on the surface behind him. Hopefully this will put it in perspective.




We were lucky to have such a good swim -- sometimes the shark dives right away and you only get a few minutes "on the shark." The industry average (yes, they keep stats) is about 8-9 minutes, and we stretched our hour to the breaking point. It was great. It was humbling. It was so exhausting that, upon returning the caravan park, I barely had enough energy to beat Kris at cribbage. We even turned off NCIS in the middle, so you know we were tired.

Besides, tomorrow was another big day!