Ningaloo Reef

Depart to Ningaloo Reef

I’ve flown a lot in my life. I’ve racked up nearly one and a half million miles on my American Airlines account. I have only missed one flight in my entire life, until this trip. I somehow managed to not only miss our first flight, I also missed the flight the next morning. The first flight was because I wasn’t paying attention when I got on the train and accidentally took a train that was going out west instead of down to the airport. Of course, it was an express train, so it skipped past about eight different train stations before I could get off. I quickly took a taxi back towards the airport but missed the flight by 10 minutes. I arranged to take the first flight in the morning, but that was at 6 AM and I slept through my alarm. As a result, we missed the original boat launch and had to get a little dingy out to our scuba boat. Since we missed our flight, and had to meet the boat separately, we left from a protected turtle hatching site. Beautiful departure spot anyway.

Sony A7R II | Sony 24-70 f/4 | 24mm | f/5.0 | 1/8000th | ISO1600

We booked on Sail Ningaloo, which seems to be the only Live Aboard diving boat in Ningaloo region. The boat was a large-ish catamaran, with 4 full rooms and some additional small bunks. Overall, the boat was good, however could have used one more staff to manage everything. We have heard that Ningaloo Reef was basically the same as the Great Barrier Reef, but unfortunately, we didn’t have great conditions, which really impacted the diving and the overall experience. Winds came from the south, which really made the water choppy and stirred up a lot of sediment in the water, which really affected visibility. As an example, when we went diving on the Great Barrier Reef, visibility was more than 30 meters for pretty much every dive. For Ningaloo, it was super choppy water, the visibility was generally less than 5 meters, and could have been as low as 2 meters.

First two dives were a bit off – my parter both had trouble getting underwater, as well as read the gauge wrong on the first dive, which lead to a very short dive, as in only about 25 minutes.. The water was *super* choppy. It had been more than a year since our last dive, and I think we were both a bit out of practice. On our second dive, we both really struggled to pressurize, but finally got down.

The biggest turtles she’s ever seen

The morning dive on the second day was good – saw and took photos of a couple of different turtles, but pretty murky and not good visibility. However, we did run into a few turtles. We saw one that must have been over a meter across. I mean, this guys was just massive. I tried to get a few photos of him, but as I said, the visibility really was not good, and the pictures all came out murky.

Saw the smallest eel she’s ever seen

On the same dive, my partner saw what she described as “the smalled eel I have ever seen – it was so cute!!!” It turns out, it was a white eyed morey eel, which normally can be around 2 feet long as adults, but the one we saw must have been a baby because it must have only been 10-15 centimeters or so. Again, unfortunately since the visibility wasn’t all that great, we weren’t able to get any photos of it.

Swam with about a dozen reef sharks

On our second to last dive, we went in at a dive site called Ashos Gap which has as a major highlight a shark cleaning station. The cleaning station is really a large cabbage coral where the sharks (as well as turtles) go and get their teeth and gills cleaned by smaller parasite eating fish. On our dive, there must have been 12-13 grey reef sharks just circling around and getting a good cleaning. There was a pretty good current going, so we had to swim around and make a couple of stops to be able to just watch the sharks circling. Now, to say that I don’t like the thought of swimming with sharks is quite an understatement, but these reef sharks don’t really like to eat humans, so there was really no threat to us. Very cool experience though, and something I’d like to try again in better conditions.

Swam with juvenile 6-meter Whale Shark

I wish I could say that I took the photos below, but they were actually our professional photographer on the boat. We took a day-long whale shark tour with 3Islands Diving. Many people have told me that this is one of those ‘bucket list’ items – to be able to swim with the largest fish in the ocean. We had a great time, found one juvinile whale shark and he was pretty calm. I had 4 separate swims with this guy. The process is basically one of the staff on the boat will get in the water as a spotter, and will keep an eye out for which direction the whale shark is swimming. Then another staff will get in the water with up to 6 people and basically say “it will be coming on your right” or “coming on your left”. You all line up in a line and as the whale shark swims by, you can start swimming alongside it. You’re meant to stay about 3 meters away, and only swim along the side of the whale shark. Normally, they are pretty fast and I struggled to keep up with him, but did have a good 20-30 second swim alongside. On my second time, the guy turned and literally almost ran into me!! I had to take evasive swim quickly, but then kept up with him for a good 30 seconds or so.

Canon 7D | Tokina 10-17mm | 10mm | f.6.3 | 1/320th | ISO250

Once the whale shark gets out of site, you just bob in the water and wait for the boat to come around and position itself so it’s a little easier to get out of the water and back on the boat. Then, as long as the whale shark is cooperating, you might get to go for another couple of swims. One of the coolest experiences of my life, but also a bit scary. We were on the outside of the reef, the conditions were pretty choppy and if you put your face in the water and look down, there must have been 200 meters of dark water – no idea what else is below you. It’s just clear open water!!!