Days 21-23 Exmouth (26-28 September)

The highlight of these three days was our boat trip on Sunday to the Murion Islands, 16km off shore.  Took about an hour and a half to get there.  Along the way we saw two humpback whales, fantastic.  Unfortunately, too far away to get some good shots.  However on the way back we were able to get a closeup of a whale that was incredibly close to shore.  Amazing to see them.  The dive crew say they see many on these trips.  In fact there is a 2 week period at the end of August when sometimes they see whalesharks, manta rays and humpacks in a single dive!  Imagine that!  The dive centre we dived with also cover the whaleshark season and this season (May-July) they had 530 whalesharks sightings!  I'm sure the same one in some cases.  But still an incredible amount.   We were extremely lucky with the weather, there was hardly any wind (compared to the previous days) and the water was calm (didn't stop me from taking a Travelcalm tablet for sea sickness though).  The dive masters were very good and knowledgeable and provided all gear although we have most our ours.  I didn't dive just opted to snorkel, I hung up my diving fins a while ago and after watching the divers get geared up I am happy not to do it - too much like hard work lugging all that gear around - I think this might be John's last dive too.  The water temperature is 23 degrees which believe it or not is still chilly, even with a 3/4 3mm wetsuit!  We must be aclimatising as we are used to 18-20 degrees in Busso.  I'll let John tell you about his diving experience but my snorkels were very very good.  The first snorkel was at a site at the east side of south Murion Island, it was like looking into an aquarium, lots of fishlife and coral, large schools of a variety of fish including kingfish, angel/damsel fish, a moon wrasse and lots of other fish that I can't identify.  Needless to say it was pretty speccy.  My second snorkel was just as pretty and this time I saw a bat fish it was huge.  The third dive was called the Coral Bowl and was predominantly coral, brain coral, plate coral, gorgonan fan corals, lots of different colours, blues yellows, purples, it is encouraging to see a lot of new growth.   This was a very pretty dive and we were lucky the way the sun was shining over it showed it in its best light. The Murion Islands are within a sanctuary zone which means no fishing or spearfishing which is great.  The water depth didn't exceed 12 metres with lots of bombies closer to the surface so good viewing.  Overall it was a great day and we still agree Ningaloo Reef offers some of the best diving sites (compared to what we have seen at the Barrier Reef).  Lets hope with all the development and oil mining that is happening around here and further north that it doesn't get spoilt.  It was long day starting at 7.30am and getting back at 4.00pm and we were concerned living Coco for so long in the caravan.  Our neighbour offered to check on her during the day and let her out into the shade or turn the a/c on but Coco wouldn't let her in (she probably would have done with some persistence) so we had lots of smiles form Coco when we got home (for those who don't know Coco she smiles when she greets us).  I took her for a long walk to the beach as John had taken her in the morning at 6.00am (yes I did say John).  So today Monday was a relax day and tomorrow we are planning on doing some more snorkelling and kayaking.  It is going to only be 27 degrees tomorrow compared to the 30-35s we have had so should be a nice change.

Hi My turn but Karen has taken all the highlights! However I can add a few highlights of what I saw under the water while she was floating around on the surface looking like a tasty meal (no not for me but the sharks which abound up here!) Naturally the white tipped reef sharks are always around but on the second dive I came across a BIG Sythe shaped tail sticking out of this cave! so naturally I tried to get in closer, then this monster decided he felt cornered so he wanted OUT! Not ferocious but just wanted out so I moved aside, it was pretty thrilling and although you never know I felt very safe as there appeared to be no aggression at all. It was white all over which has made identification difficult but the closest I can get is a Tawny Nurse Shark (although they say they are brown! (maybe this was an Albino! :-) As Karen said it was like diving in a massive aquarium with more types of coral than I've ever seen beautiful swim throughs which often hid even bigger cod and grouper which would weigh hundreds of kilos! All this in around 10m so you got a good 60 minutes per dive. Anyway there was plenty other sights but I think you get the picture! Bye 4 now!