We left for Exmouth on Thursday - just a 2 hour trip from Coral Bay, and prepared ourselves for the whaleshark swimming trip on Friday....
And so Friday 14th May arrived - whaleshark day! The prime reason for coming to West Australia was about to happen! Out day started quite early with a 7:30 pickup to get driven an hour or so to where we got on the boat. We then went out through the reef and had a 45minute dive as a warm up for the main event.
The dive itself was quite amusing - the 2 dive guides were very inexperienced, hadn't dived the dive site before, seemed reluctant to give a dive briefing and got lost under water. Despite all this we survived the dive, got back on the boat and settled down to wait for the radio call from the spotter plane to say that the whaleshark had been found.
After about half and hour, we had a hilarious five minutes, first the skipper said that the spotter plane had found a whaleshark, two minutes later he changed his mind and said it was just a whale, two minutes after that he said that manta rays had been spotted instead, and shortly after that the boat was turned round again as a whaleshark had definately been spotted!
So the boat steamed off to where the whaleshark was and we got our snorkelling gear ready and lined up on the back of the boat. Just as we were getting ready to jump one of the crew yelled to stop the engines as the whaleshark was about to swim right under the boat. We got a fleeting glimpse of it as it swam by, it was huge, around eight metres long!
We then moved ahead of the whaleshark and jumped in. All of a sudden out of the murky water it appeared. It was simply huge, we swam along side it for about a minute, before getting left behind in its wake. A last view was of its enormous tail swishing past.
Unfortunately shortly after we got out of the water, the whaleshark dived and didn't return to the shallows, so we went steaming southwards to try and find another. During lunchtime the skipper spotted 3 manta rays on the surface and we were able to snorkel with one of them for an amazing twenty minutes whilst it fed on plankton.
After lunch, another whaleshark was spotted and we got a chance for another encounter. This one was slightly smaller (5metres long). But we had a really fantastic view of it before it also dived.
After 14 years diving Melanie finally saw a whaleshark, and it still hasn't really sunk in.
(For photographic proof click HERE.)
