Ningaloo—Exmouth, AU

 

Ningaloo Marine Park, Exmouth, Australia 

We are in the back of beyond — on the western end of the Nullabor where the air is dry, the land is dryer and a few hardy souls eek out a living fishing. Exmouth started out as an American military base in 1967. Now it’s a Australian community of less than 2,000. There’s not much here, here.

 

 

We tendered to the port, which was a circular parking lot where a few buses were parked. Our group filed into our tour bus and we drove 35 km to Ningaloo Marine Park to see coral and reef fishes on the west coast coral reef. Ningaloo means pointy-thing like a nose...and Exmouth, has a pointy arm that juts out into the Indian Ocean, hence the aboriginal name.

 

 

 

 

Along the way we saw the communication towers that were built by the Americans. They were the purpose for the base and are still used. They don’t look very impressive, but space here is so vast, it’s hard to discern their true size. The central tower is taller than Eiffel, and the towers encompass a square kilometer.

 

 

There’s an old light house that used to be manned by 2 families, but now it’s electronic. The coastline is relatively flat, so it’s inland a bit on a hill, which is not much of a hill, but you take what you get.

 

Once in our glass bottom boat, we saw the reef. It’s a collection of coral of the “not-very-colorful” variety. We did see a few blue coral, but everything else looked green. We saw coral that looked like boulders, leaves, spirals, knobs...you name it. Color is determined by the algae the coral eat, the algae around here is greenish. The water was still and clear. We saw a giant clam and few fish but most fish were camera shy. 

 

Our guide told us the variety of coral we were looking at, and he also told us it’s age. Most of the reef is about 400 years old, but there’s a portion of reef that is 1000. Considering the polyps that make up the coral are teeny, tiny creatures, that seems like a long life span. The reef is healthy even though there are portions of dead reef. The dead reef is needed to grow algae which is important for the lifecycle of the living reef.