The world heritage area of Shark Bay is situated 830km north of Perth and is famous for ancient lifeforms (stromolites), marine fauna (including dugongs, dolphins, whales & turtles). In the early 1960’s a Mrs Watts started feeding the wild dolphins that would follow her husbands fishing boat to a campsite on the shoreline (Monkey Mia).
Up early, hurriedly dressing and making that obligatory cup of tea to be down at the beach for the first dolphin feed. They didn’t disappoint and Niky brought in her calf for all to ohh and ahh over. The dolphins quite happily come to within 30cm of the shore in about shin deep water, proping themselves up on their bellies and await to be fed. THE DEC (Dept of Environment & Conservation) then allows individuals to feed 5 of the grown female dolphins up to 2kg of fish each per day over 3 feedings (usually in the morning and dictated by when the dolphins come to shore). In the wild dolphins need about 6kg of fish a day to survive so the other 4kg must be wild caught by the dolphins themselves, thus ensuring natural behaviour still occurs.
As luck would have it Toby got picked first up to feed these gentle creatures. The oldest dolphin Nicky (at 32yrs) has been doing this her whole life, brought in by her mother when she was just days old. Today she brings in her calf (only 16days old) and the cycle is set to repeat. We laze around the beach that morning watching the dolpins come and go (with names like Surprise, Shock, Startle, Puck, Piccolo) all 3 feeds which are completed by about 9am.
Pete then disappeared into a hotel room in the resort that he sweet talked the girls at reception to give him while he had a phone interview with a head-hunter (nice way to conduct business!).
Meanwhile the kids and I do a short camel ride and meet up with ‘Henk and Sandra’ a dutch couple who came here 5 years ago for a holiday and never left. Their camels do not have nose pegs and the Owners are passionate about letting the camels work because they want to. Each morning the couple goes out to the gate of their 12ha unfenced property and waits. Any camel that comes up to have his/her bridle put on is then taken to work. Today there are 3 camels ‘Digger, Maddy & Camelia. Henk says they are the most reliable out of the 9 that they own and just love to work, the others come along when they feel like it. Being a conservation area, camel dung is not allowed on the beaches and they all wear a leather bag beneath their tails to catch the dung, which the owners use as fertiliser back home.
After lunch we joined ‘Shotover’ a 60’ catamaran for a wildlife sailing experience looking for Dolphins, Dugongs, turtles, sharks, sea-snakes, stingrays, flying fish, long-tom and migratory birds. We manage to spot quite a number of the above and spend an hour or so drifting over the shallow sea grass beds watching the dugongs munch away. An estimated 10 000 or 10% of the world’s dugong population survive on the huge seagrass beds in Shark Bay Marine Park. Protected from hunting now, these slow graceful swimmers grow to about 3.3m and weigh an average 250kg. It was great to be out on the water again and feel the wind in our hair and the quiet of sailing, we both realise this is a true passion and one that we will continue to crave for the rest of our lives.
Monkey Mia is the number one behavioural research site in the world for bottlenose dolphins and tiger sharks and often works in collaboration with the West Australian Government. Dolphin research includes male association, female to calf association and juveniles. Later that evening there was a kids talk by one of the local researches all about the Shark Bay Dolphins, our 2 happily went along walkie-talkies on hand leaving the 2 of us with a free evening on our hands…So we had our first couple dinner since leaving Sydney more than 5 months ago. We had an alfresco dining experience, a lovely bottle of wine and were only visited by the kids around 9pm when the talk finished and they took themselves off to the van to watch DVD’s - those walkie talkies are fantastic.
Monkey Mia Dolphin Resort (Powered $44)
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