Shoulda, Coulda, Woulda!!! The Awesome Whalesharks!!

My lovely friend Sue from work told me to see the whale sharks in Exmouth and I should have listened to her from the start. We could have waited until we got to Exmouth but we were so keen to see them we tried unsuccessfully in Coral Bay. Had we of waited until Exmouth it would have cost us half as much. But in the end we did swim with the magnificent whale sharks with 3 Islands Whale Shark Tours and it was awesome!!!

These beautiful creatures were just so chillaxed even with us swimming right beside them. The crew on the tour have it well sorted, you get in the water in the direct path the whale shark is swimming so the whale shark swims right toward you. That's Stella on the left in the photo below!

You move a bit to the side as it passes then when you are level with it's pec fin on the side you start swimming and try and keep up!!! 

We swam with two different sharks, one 6m and one 7m in length, although they grow up to 18m so apparently these ones were juveniles!! The first one was swimming quite fast and was hard to keep up with, while the second one was pretty much just floating along. 

The first swim we were so gob smacked at the sheer size of the whale shark, but by our fifth and last swim, it was so enjoyable, you took a bit more in and were able to study the fins and spots and structure of the most amazing and biggest fish in the sea!! 

We also snorkelled in Ningaloo Reef and saw heaps of fish and also caught a glimpse of a dugong, which was great. 

We also saw a few turtles. Stella also had fun swimming through the bubbles that Josh our boat captain blew while under water. They were perfectly round, I have no idea how he did it!

Overall, we had the most awesome day!

On returning to land we headed back to camp and had happy hour with some fellow campers, before calling it a night! Stella took this great photo of Ronan at sunset!

Some of the professional photos.  They are a little better quality than ours!!