We have been so lucky with our weather up here! Virtually the minute we arrived here in Exmouth,we left behind the grey and cold of Perth and entered a wonderful world of warm and balmy, and today the weather improved even more.

Our tour boat today was Kings and they really treated us as if we were. Our first stop was at Tamina reef and I was lucky to see a 1.5 meter shovel-nosed ray sitting on the bottom, quietly looking the other way from me. It was the first time I have seen such a large one under the water. What a shame I didn’t have the underwater camera for my first snorkel and even though the water clarity wasn’t too good, I also saw some really nice fish, a yellow and black Christmas tree tube worm and a small turtle on my return to the boat.

At that point in the day, I had ticked all my boxes except for the big one labelled “whale shark”

After a really huge morning tea (and a bit of a brag about the awesome things I saw), we headed south down the coast and out of the Ningaloo reef awaiting the spotter planes call to “come and swim with a whale shark!”. And we weren’t disappointed!! After about half an hour, one was spotted and we had a short swim before it dived down really deep and disappeared. It was really amazing but the next whale sharks to follow blew me away!!

In total we had multiple swims with about 5 different whale sharks, (the biggest about 7 meters and one a girl whaleshark!!!). We will use our photo id pictures in the lab tomorrow to see if they are return visitors to Exmouth or new ones onto the database.

Our day ended with a snorkel near Tantabiddy boat ramp at a patch of coral called the Coral Gardens where I got a few shots of fish and a massive clam.

It has been a really exciting day – my head is still spinning a bit (literally –my semicircular canals think I am still onboard the boat) and I can’t wait to do it all again.