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Published: April 23rd 2012
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Jo woke up early to take advantage of a great beach to go for a run, then it was a quick breakfast and back in the bus for a short journey across to Monkey Mia for a chance to feed wild dolphins on the beach. When we arrived there was already a large crowd gathered at the top of the beach in the special area sectioned off for these interactions with the dolphins. The guides then got us standing single file about a meter in from the edge of the beach, then it was just a case of waiting and hoping they would come in to meet us and be fed. Whilst we were tentatively waiting the guides told us all about the area and the dolphins they are allowed to feed. They've built up a family tree of the dolphins in the area and given each one a name. They recognise them by the speckled grey pattern on the underneath of their bellies - which doesnt start to show until they reach sexual maturity which is about 8years old. They also recognise them by any markings on their fins where they've come to close to a
boat, or had a close encounter with a shark. The dolphins have a gestation period of a year and need to continue feeding their calfs for around 3years as they are teaching them how to fish. We also saw a turtle, a small sting ray and a sea snake which got the crowd a little anxious as they are highly venomous!After a few minutes the first dolphin swam into the shallows and checked out all the spectators who'd come along; we could see a couple of others but they were hanging back in deeper water with some baby dolphins. Initially ???? (the dolphin) stayed down the other end of the line from where we were standing, only allowing us fleeting limps of her, but then she swam down the line of people to where we were and it was pretty incredible to be less than a meter from a wild dolphin. Conscious that these dolphins are wild, they only actually feed five specific animals a very small amount of food so that they are encouraged to go back into deeper waters and teach their calfs how to fish rather than rely on hand pits from humans,
and if you're lucky enough you're invited from the crowd to hand feed the dolphin. By now we'd been joined by a second dolphin with her calf and it was time to feed them as they limit the contact time with humans so the baby calfs don't get neglected by their mothers - the calfs need to be directly under the mum for feeding and do need deeper water. The resort has learnt this from experience as they noticed an increase in the calfs that were dieing and realised it was because mum was always close in to the shore and not taking care of her calf. As they started choosing individuals from the crowd to take part in the feeding, a couple more dolphins joined us and soon we had all five dolphins being fed in front of us which was amazing, although unfortunately neither of us were picked to do the feeding. Once the fish had run out the dolphins swam back out to deeper water to fish for themselves and feed the calfs so we headed for coffee to check out all the photos we'd taken.After the coffee we headed back to the
interaction area as they had started a second session and fortunately the crowd was much smaller. As before we only had the one dolphin swimming up and down parallel to the crowd checking us out, but as the feeding process started the other dolphins returned. It soon came down to the guides having the last fishes for the selected spectators to give to dolphins. Fortunately Wills decision to wear a bright yellow T-shirt seemed to payoff and he was chosen to feed Puck which was a real highlight for the trip to Monkey Mia.After the dolphins we took a short drive back to Hamelin pool to see the stromatolites. These are living organisms which are thought to be the first living organisms on earth - they look like little rock towers in the shallow salty waters of Hamelin pool and they produce little oxygen bubbles. Some suggest that it is this production of oxygen of which eventually led to a change of atmosphere on earth which meant that mammals could develop. We stopped for lunch at the stromatolites before starring a long afternoon of driving up to Coral Bay. We saw a few wildlife on the drive with a couple of suicidal emus crossing the road, a wedge tailed sea eagle, which is the second largest bird in Australia, flying overhead as well as a near miss with a bush turkey. There was also one unlucky unidentified large bird as we headed into Coral Bay after sunset, who flew straight into the windscreen and gave everyone a shock...we're pretty sure that bird isn't flying anymore. But as we already had burgers waiting for us at the hostel there was no need to stop and pick up the bush tucker. Coral Bay was named after the first hotel that was built in the area. The hotel was built to support the US service men who were based in Exmouth and used Coral Bay as a holiday escape. The base in Exmouth was built as a result of 19 Japanese bombings in Darwin that took place during WWII.
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