Dolphins and Sea Cruise

We were up before the crack of dawn again - so much for a relaxing holiday!! By 7am we were on the road to Monkey Mia.

Monkey Mia dolphins have been fed by humans for more than 50 years. In the early 70's and 80's people would feed the dolphins as much fish as they wanted. Unfortunately this led to the dolphins becoming reliant on humans and not teaching their calves how to hunt and catch fish. This resulted in many calves dying from starvation once they were weaned.

Now days feeding is done in a much more stringent manner - under strict guidelines and performed by Rangers.. It is illegal to feed or be within 50 m of a wild dolphin. The Monkey Mia dolphins are offered food on their first three visits to the designated beach between 8 and 12. Only two dolphins are fed - Piccolo and Kia - and they are offered 3 fish per visit. This is equivalent to 10% of their daily food take - they eat around 10kg of fish per day.

The dolphin experience begins at 7.45am but you are only invited down to the waters edge once the dolphins are within the designated area. Today's dolphins decided to visit kept us waiting in much anticipation. Four dolphins finally arrived at 8.15am - we had 29 year old Piccolo, 24 year old Kiya (who are sisters) as well as 3 year old Pan (Piccolo's daughter) and  3 year old Jindi (Kiya's daughter).

Apparently there are around 3000 Indo-pacific Bottlenose dolphins around the Shark Bay area and 1900 of these are named based on the shape of their dorsal fin. In Pan's case she is quite distinctive as she only has half a tail flute after a narrow escape from a shark. 

On the waters edge were about 200+ people spread over 100m stretch. The ranger was walking up and down the line chatting about the dolphins and their lives while the dolphins were kind of following her. For us during this time, the dolphins hadn't come very close and we were getting a little disappointed. Our views looked something like this….

We had been down by the waters edge for over 20 minutes now with very average views of the dolphins, when two more volunteers arrived with buckets in hand. We were instructed to move out of the water - a sign to the dolphins that it was time to eat! Six luckily people were randomly chosen to feed either Piccolo or Kia a fish each. Somehow I was chosen and our family walked into the water really close to Piccolo and Pan! We decided Katy was to feed Piccolo the fish which she happily did. It was very cool and definitely the highlight of the experience.

Once the dolphin feeding was over, we exited the beach, another signal to the dolphins that our encounter had finished and they were to head out to sea. We headed off for coffee, passing time til our next activity a cruise.

We boarded the Aristocrat 2 at the Monkey Mia jetty, located adjacent to the Dolphin Experience area at 10am. Jade, our skipper drove the 2 hulled catamaran out to sea. Conditions were ideal - sunny, still with the surface of the ocean looking quite glassy.

We encountered a several dolphins on the way out. A few rode on the bow waves turning upside down as they did! We stalled another dolphin who was 'sponging'. This phenomenon is apparently rare to see. It refers to the dolphin sucking a sponge to it's mouth then diving down to stir up the sea floor hunting fish. 

Several loggerhead turtles heads would be spotted in the distance. These turtles are not fans of boats and quickly submerge out of sight.

We coasted over one area of sea grass meadow in search for a dugong and her cal that had been spotted yesterday. It was coming into the end of the season for these creatures as they migrate north to warmer waters. 

Our family loved Jade's explanation of why dugongs need warm water - all to do with farting!! As these sea cows have a fibrous diet, they expel lots of gas. In colder water, they tend to tense their muscles holding all the gas in which makes them buoyant so they float to the surface and become perfect dinner for a shark.

We motored over to the next sea grass meadow having had no luck spotting the dugongs in the first. It was only a short time later we saw two brown humps break the waters surface briefly. We had found them! Jade trailed this mother and her calf as we all eagerly watch as they disappear and surfaced again a few minutes later. It reminded Andy and I of our whale watching experience off Vancouver Island where once we developed our film (yes it was in the pre digital age!) we had 15 photos of nothing much more that a small grey hump!!

On our return sail, we all took the opportunity for a sea spa. We climbed down in a net on the back of the boat, then held on while the boat drove along with the water rushing up through the net and over us. Cold but a fun way to finish the cruise.

We made our way back to Denham for the Best Burgers at the local pub. I think the sign should have said the Biggest - as only one person in our family finished theirs.

Late afternoon, prior to setting up camp, we drove out to Little Lagoon. The water was clear, refreshing and shallow - we walked out about 100 m from the shore line and it was still only up to our waist! A quick dip completed our day.