Ocean Park

I wasn't quite sure I wanted to see Ocean Park. It is an aquarium featuring local marine life from Shark Bay. I've seen so much wonderful wild life on my trip, I was not too psyched to visit captive critters. But Cindy seemed to think it would be a worthwhile thing to visit, and I trusted her judgment. She was right; I really enjoyed it.The fellow who gave us the tour was knowledgeable and a good story teller. It was very interesting to see these animals up close.

My favorite part was the baby loggerhead turtles.

I liked when he picked up and held the extremely venomous sea snake.

These fish beg like dogs and even do tricks like spout water to get his attention when he has treats.

They had some cool skulls. I think this one  is a dugong.











Other great fish that I do not have good pictures of include the stone fish, lionfish, moray eels, lemon and nervous sharks, pink snapper, and a cuttlefish which changed colors while he was enticing it with food.

Shell Beach

It was too windy to go out on the water today, so Cindy and I went on a road trip with a group of the dolphin researchers. The first stop was Shell Beach. The beach is comprised of billions of tiny white crunchy shells. It was strange and beautiful. You could lie in them and make shell angels. You could crunch a handful in your hand. We had fun throwing them in the air, at each other and just sitting in the sun, chatting and playing with the shells.

The Old Pearler Restaurant in Denham is made from bricks carved from the compressed shells at Shell Beach. If you find yourself in Denham, WA you really should dine at the Old Pearler, not that you will have many other options.

Finishing Off the Project

As we headed out in the morning on the boat we had set a few traps with the goal of collecting a few more specimens of Cindy's study fish, the striped trumpeter. We had a plan to celebrate the end of this study by cooking up some trumpeters. One trap caught about 30 trumpies. We picked the four largest ones, and brought them in. Greg, clean and pan fried them (with butter, garlic, lemon and salt and pepper). Delish! A great way to finish off fish research project.

 

Boat Trip to Herald Bight

Cindy, Greg and I took Cuvier out to around the tip of Cape Peron for a relaxing day of wildlife viewing. The coastline is stunning.

We saw the usual winter critters: dolphins, green turtles, shovelnose rays, etc. But we saw some animals that were very exciting for me. (I am not so jaded that I do not get excited about dolphins and turtles, but I have seen them every day here, and I was hoping to see more of the animals that have not been regular visitors in the cold July waters.

Shark Bay was named for the abundance of sharks, and large tiger sharks are common in the warmer months. But we had not seen a single shark since I have been here, even when we were setting out baited lines for them. Today I saw 4 small “nervous sharks”. I think they were all under one meter in length. All of the little sharks were in very shallow water near near the mangroves. There was a sandy bottom, and they were very easy to spot, but true to their name they were very skittish and hard to get close to. Shortly after we left Peron Point we all three spotted a large shark over the sand near the edge of the sea grass. Our boat startled it, and it swam away, giving us a good view of its big square head. It was undoubtedly a tiger shark about 2 meters long. For a tiger shark it was fairly small, but it looked big to me!

We also saw two young dugongs. We had been told by another boat (dolphin researchers on Pomboo) that there were five dugongs in the area, but we did not see the adults.

We saw lots of rays including a huge cowtail.

On the way back to Monkey Mia, we noticed a dark cloud and a pillar of rain coming down right over the resort. We debated waiting it out, and we did try to go around it, but decided to just plow through. We got poured on for a bout five minutes (enough to get soaked). After the showers we were treated to a lovely double rainbow.

At about 6:10, Cindy got a text saying that the Space Station would be rising up over the horizon at 6:16, so we all went out to take look. By the time we found it, it had risen fairly high in the sky. It was shining like a star, but moving quickly across the sky. You could clearly see that it was a structure, and not a celestial body.

Fishing, Pearl Farm and Dolphin Talk

Today was a shark fishing day. We put the Cuvier in the water at 6:45 and set ten lines (in about 40 ft of water) with snapper frames (carcasses of pink snapper with the fillet removed) and then we came in for breakfast. On shark fishing days the lines need to be checked every two hours, and today we had leisurely time on the water between our 10, 12, 2 and 4:00 line checks.

During our first break we went to visit the pearl farm. From afar, it looks like it is a building on the beach, but the pearl farm processing building and shop is floating on the bay. 

It is a family run business. 

One of their specialties is embedding an opal in an oyster and having the pearl grow around it. They were beautiful, but super expensive.

During our second and third break, we cruised the sea grass meadows until we found a lucky spot, then we put down the anchor and fished and relaxed. We had a few hand lines and one rod and reel. 

We caught nothing on the hand lines, but both Sean and Greg caught a few pike (long fin pike?) Got a few nibbles with my hand line and rubber lure. Cindy put a piece of Taylor fin on her line, and attracted a lot of butter fish.

The water was extremely clear and glassy, and at one point Cindy noticed something strange in the water. It was a pair of small shovel nose rays, one smaller and lighter in color than the other. What was unusual about these rays (we see shovel nose rays almost every day) was that they seemed to be wedged together, the smaller one tucked in to the larger one, so that when they swam (about every 10 minutes they moved about 5 meters, they moved in synch, like they were one organism.

Today I got to to every part of shark fishing (except handling a shark, because we did not catch one) including driving the boat both at speed, to check the lines and to pull up the equipment at the end of the day. (Before Cindy had only had me drive the boat when we were cruising slowly along transect lines)

In the evening we went to see Richard Connor speak on dolphin politics. His talk was fascinating! He studies the alliances between male dolphins and has been coming to Monkey Mia for over twenty years, since he was an undergraduate at UC Santa Cruz and there was practically nothing up here. There are some individual dolphins up here that have been part of his studies the whole time (including Bly who was found dead a few days ago).

Some of the main/interesting points that he made: humans and dolphins (and elephants) have large brains and also have complex social structures, we need to depend on individuals with whom we are in competition with to reproduce. The male dolphins establish long term alliances in both small groups (2-3 individuals) and large groups (14 -40 I think he said). The groups last years, but are fluid, individuals can come and go.Individual dolphins have individual specialties and skills when it comes to foraging and the females can teach these skills to their offspring. He explained how hard it is to study dolphin communication since there is so much of it going on and underwater it is hard to tell which sounds are coming from which animal. At the end of the talk he explained a “dolphin soap opera”, diagramming how the small alliances have changed (who's been hanging with whom) over twenty years. It reminded me of middle school social dynamics, with one individual always being the one to be excluded and a few others always being the popular dolphins. He obviously loves his work, and I see why everyone around here has so much respect and fondness for him.

Cruising on the Shotover

The Shotover is a large catamaran that runs out of Monkey Mia. It takes visitors on wildlife viewing cruises and it goes out on sunset cruises. It used to be a racing boat, and I've heard legends that at one time it was the fastest boat in the country. I think they have coolest logo ever. From a distance it looks like a perfect flower, but the petals of the flower are Shark Bay critters: dugong, gecko, dolphin, turtle, pelican. I was here for a week before I got up close enough to the boat to see the animals incorporated in the design.

Cindy and I joined the afternoon outing on the Shotover. It was warm and sunny when we left. It was a beautiful cruise, we sailed north to...? We did not see much wildlife at first and then: DUGONG! We did not get a great look at it, and there is a good chance it was the one we saw yesterday.

We came across a green turtle that was floating at the surface, looking extremely ill or even dead. (Normally they only surface for a quick breath and then submerge, as they are more vulnerable to predators when they are on the surface.) Notice how his head is underwater.

This is what a healthy turtle should look like on the surface. He just came up for a quick breath. (This pic was also taken from the Shotover about an hour earlier)

We took him on board and called the Department of Environment and Conservation who wanted us to bring the poor fellow back in with us to take a look at him. We found out the next day that he did not survive.

We saw dolphins of course. You can't go out on, or even get near the water without seeing dolphins here. A group of five Monkey Mia regulars came right up to the boat an hung out for a while.

Cindy drove the boat for a while (She has the proper license! We had a lovely afternoon on the water then came back and crunched a bit more data before dinner.

Dugong and Hookah

We started out the day with a run into town (Denham) to pick up some more snapper frames for Wednesday's shark fishing. While in town I got a good look at an emu strolling along the side of the road. If I had any image editing software on this computer, I'd have a better picture for you...

Around noon we set out on the Cuvier to complete the transect runs we have been doing this week and to dive along Cindy's fish transect lines. I was excited and nervous: nervous about sharks, poisonous snakes, and not being familiar with the hookah apparatus used for breathing and super excited to get under the surface of Shark Bay!!






The big excitement for the day came right before we started our first transect run: We saw a dugong! At first I thought it was a dolphin. It was about 30 meters away when we first saw it. Sean recognized it as a dugong immediately, and I realized it could not be a dolphin because it did not have a dorsal fin. As we got closer to it, I noticed it was also much bigger than a dolphin. It was huge. I never got a look at its face, but it within a few meters of the boat a few times before swimming off. Dugong!!!!!!

After completing the transects, we set out for Cindy's fish study lines. She is thinking of redesigning the experiment, and our work today involved swimming along the lines and observing the number and types of fish present (while Cindy was thinking of ways to quantify the fish that present along these lines). We did this in both interior (shallow sea grass beds)(6 ft deep max) and edge (of the sea grass) ( a bit deeper, maybe 20 ft.). We snorkeled the shallow sections and hookah dove the deeper ones.



The hookah apparatus allows you to stay down as long as you need or want to without worrying about running out of air. You are still breathing compressed air out of a regulator. The regulator is connected to a long hose that is connected to the hookah pump that floats on the surface.

On our first dive my air line got wrapped around the buoy line and I was trying to pull it along with me. At first I thought there was a sudden strong current, and I was kicking really hard to try to keep up with Cindy. Then I realized my air hose was tight, and I tried pulling on it. I was still getting air, but I could not figure out why I was having so much trouble moving forward, and I got a little panicky. Cindy saw what was wrong and was swimming back to release the buoy, when I decided to surface and see what was going on. After that, the diving went smoothly.
I enjoyed seeing the seagrass meadow up close. I like the Amphibolus. There was a lot of little snails attached to the Posedonia. I got to see some of the stiped trumpeters that Cindy is studying and a pair of very large (maybe half a meter) disc shaped fish with a big black stripe. (a bat fish?)

It was a fun day, and a confidence builder for getting in the water here and using the new equipment.