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.