A small amount of sealife

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So Coral Bay... the gateway to the Ningaloo Reef, Western Australia's answer to the Great Barrier Reef.

Here we had a number of optional extras, meaning my chance to blow a big load of money in one go. Most of my day was spent on the 'Manta Ray' snorkeling trip. This started off with some snorkeling over the reef looking at all the colourful fish and coral in the top couple of metres of the sea. Lots of life there and pretty pristine reefs. I even saw a nurse shark hiding under a ledge.

After that we came to main point of the trip- Manta Rays! Being wild animals we weren't guaranteed a sighting, but as it turned out this most definitely wasn't an issue. I got quite a shock when I was snorkeling along and suddenly saw the first one, a dark shape below me with a 3 metre wingspan. As luck would have it we caught a bunch of them on a cleaning station having parasites eaten off them by cleaner wrasse, so after I saw the first one I soon spotted another, then another, then another.... in the end I counted seven in view at one time. This is apparently one of the best trips ever- the tour guide who has been doing this for two years said she hadn't ever in that time seen as many at once. So you could call it quite a successful trip! I just hope some of the pics I took with the underwater camera come out.

After Manta time was over, we went over to another part of the reef to see if we could top things off with some snorkeling with turtles. During lunch we had seen a number popping their heads up near the boat. As it happened, whilst we were in the water the turtles were nowhere to be found, but it was still a nice general snorkel over the reef, and gave me a chance to finish off the film on the underwater camera. And after the Mantas, I wasn't going to complain about not seeing the turtles whilst snorkeling.

Once we got back from the Manta Ray tour, me and two other people had decided to blow even more money on a pricey but awesome 20 minute flight over the reef in a light aircraft. The subtle changes in shades of blue on the reef were really picturesque and provided a massive contrast to the parched yellow-brown bush on land. It also helped me appreciate the vastness of the area, with a flat brown plain stretching off unchanging into infinity. In the water we also managed to spot several manta rays- little black diamonds against the blue, and even small dots that were apparently sharks.

An expensive but very worthwhile day, finished with a short drive to Exmouth, the most northern point on the current trip.

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Photos

Aerial view of the bush near Coral Bay
It just goes on forever!

Aerial view of the reef
Nice patterns...

Land and sea
Trying to be arty