Lewis's Travel on the Gravel: Back to Exmouth Whale sharks 15th to19th September

We headed back to Exmouth for our second attempt at swimming with the whale sharks. We booked the caravan park opposite the big Prawn again and just chilled out. The kids spent some time looking at Google classroom and Nash spoke to his teacher. We did a trip to the Aquarium located in the information centre. Sounds funny when the reef is right there but sometimes you just need to be a tourist. And it was a lovely morning we saw all sorts of fish and some of the shy creatures that you would not normally see on the reef.

We got up early for our tour. We had prepared that we probably wouldn't see a whale shark as it was the end of the season and it was very windy 😞

We suited up again once on the boat ohh and yeah sea sickness tablets all round.

We had just finished our first snorkel and the deck hand came down and said 'WE HAVE A WHALE SHARK ON THE LOOSE"!!!! I really can't quite believe it. We are actually going to swim with a whale shark. We are all so excited. We are in group one so that means first in the water. We can hardly get our wetsuits on we are so excited. We are told to get on the marlin board at the back of the boat.

The deck hand yells "Spotter in" one of crew jumps in and looks for the direction of the shark. Then he shouts "GO GO GO" OMG we are in swimming flat out towards the biggest fish in the ocean. Faces in the water it swims past us slow and graceful. She ( the whale shark) is so obliging. Within this surreal moment there is also a sense of urgency as the speed of a whale shark cruising is us swimming with all we have to keep up. Eventually she disappears into the blue. WOW WOW WOW!

No time to think the boat is back to pick us up and we scramble on board for another drop. We have 4 drops in the water with this beautiful girl. Each time is incredible. On our third drop we swam along and had a photographer in the water taking photos.

Brooke

Nash

Adam

Maya

As the Whale shark swam off with the photographer in tow we all grouped together in the water waiting for the boat to come around and pick us up. A loud scream from one of our group and of course I thought the worst that maybe a shark had bitten her however it was screams of excitement. To our left the shape of two fins out of the water and a spray of water in the air. Two Humpback whales were coming straight for us. A mother and her calf. These magnificent whales swam right by us only 5 metres away. I saw the whole of the whales go by. I looked in their eyes and they looked in mine. I don't really know what to say about that. Incredible, moving, awesome, unreal, spiritual. None of us felt threatened at all. The rules of engaging with Humpbacks on the reef are that you have to be 30 metres from them and if they chose to engage with you then great. So this Mamma had chosen to come to us with her calf. OMG. The skipper on the boat told us when we were back on board that in fact she had 2 calves with her the one on our side and tiny one on the boat side which the crew called a 'pickle'

These photos are not ours but they represent pretty much what we saw humpback wise

Spray and fins coming towards

Mamma and calf swimming by except less clear than this

We had another drop with the whale shark after that and for me I followed along behind her tail just watching how effortless it was for her to move through the water .On our last swim she decided to put her head down and dive for the deep.

The other thing that was special was that the Whale shark was swimming just on the back of the reef so we had to be careful not to get caught in the waves that were crashing into the reef but it made for a fantastic swim going up and down in the swells, love that!

Once back on the boat we were all buzzing from our experience. Everyone smiling and telling of their encounter.

The weather turned out to be picture perfect and we had calm seas for most of the day. We had another treat out there a big sail fish jumped out of the water about half a dozen times just showing off. These fish are the fastest on the ocean so as Nash said the biggest and the fastest fish in one day. There was a hammer head shark and we saw some turtles getting down to business. We finished the day with another snorkel back on the reef and glass of champagne.