Here is Harry’s Post about our trip on the boat with the Whale Sharks…
When the tender left the dock at Tantabiddi boat ramp, on Ningaloo Reef, I was thinking about how awesome swimming with 3m manta rays and 7m whale-sharks will be! As the double decker 50 foot Bertram cabin cruiser (yes, I mean it) began to speed along to our first snorkel site, I went up to the bow.

When we eventually made it to our first snorkel site, I jumped in and there was an amazing array of coral and fish and all sorts of other sea life.

There were different species of life such as brain coral, wrasse, tawny nurse sharks, staghorn coral and fan coral. One of the crew duck dived and held onto the ocean floor and blew bubbles in a circle shape.
When we finally found a manta ray, we all hopped in to swim with it and take photos. I took photos on an underwater camera but it’s an old fashioned film camera and I have to wait to get them developed. (Mum should buy me a waterproof digital camera) But the thing is, this was just a small reef manta which was about 3 metres wingspan. Oceanic mantas can be over 6 metres wide.
When our spotter plane found a whale shark, we all got called to the deck to prepare to swim with it.

But the whale shark went down to the depths of the ocean and instead we saw the dorsal fin of a hammerhead shark. We don’t have a photo of that. We were very disappointed that we didn’t see a whale shark.

It was still an excellent day.
By El Harro