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| June 19th - July 13th |
| 07.12.04 (8:38 pm) [edit] |
Some dates:
Coral Bay, 17th June to 26th June
Exmouth/Tantabiddi Boat Ramp/Whalesong, 26th June to July 11th
Broome, July 11th to July 13th
Coral Bay
Indeed, there is much to describe from the last month. Originally, I left Perth on a whim based mostly on suggestions from local residents: 'Go north, if I could,' they'd say, 'catch the good weather.' Indeed, the weather was looking pretty grey and feeling pretty cold when I was last in Perth and, apparently, things are still very much the same there, with rain tossed in for good measure.
Coral Bay, then, was the only destination I had. I packed a few t-shirts, a pair of shorts, pair of pants, my bathing suit, sandles, shoes, hat, and a whole lot of camping gear. The rest of my clothing I left back in Perth, at Mary's house. I foresaw myself staying out of the city for at most a month.
Coral Bay's a beautiful location with an ugly town dumped on it. The town wasn't on a map that Peter had from 1975--the place has developed directly with the discovery that Whale Sharks come to feed every year off the Ningaloo reef. It's a major business and all the tour operators are at each other's necks for the business.
There are two large caravan parks, a resort hotel, a backpacker's hostel, two supermarkets, a bakery, an old bearded painter called Nelson, Artist, and a half dozen tour operators, offering glass bottom boat tours of the reef, Whale Shark viewing, SCUBA diving lessons, dives, ATV tours... the whole shebang.
Australians do the caravan parks in a serious way: generators, freezer, fridge or two, massive gas ranges, lights, big 4X4s, trailers, tents, chairs, tables, a kitchen pantry worth of condiments, oils, and seasonings. They park in a powered lot for a long period of time and just fish, fish, and fish. The fishermen come home at 530pm and stagger off the charter boats with eskies full of fish. They then stagger back to their cars or shuttle bus and get off in town, ready to butcher their haul.
It's a pretty spectacle to see 40 so men, all fat, all sun burnt, all drunk, butchering fish at the butcher tables at the end of the day. There isn't enough room for them all, so there's usually a good audience present to witness the scales and guts flying through the air. You can take 40 fish a day per fisherman of the least threatened category, 15 from the second, middle, category, and 5 or less from the 1st. And boy, these guys take the max.
The water is blue, the sky is clear, the beaches white, empty, the essence of tranquility, and it's pretty much 25C+ every day. Unfortunately, all the coral that is immediately around the town is all dead. The tour operators claim that the cause behind the death of 25% of Coral Bay's coral and 50% of its fish population is a bad coincidence of nature.
In 1991 and again in the late 90s, a strong westerly wind blew the new coral spawn into shore, causing the coral to choke on itself and thus also seriously affecting the fish life that sustains itself on the reef's good health. The spawning lasts two days and is spontaneous--the discovery that the coral spawning coincides with the Whale Shark's feeding was the major scientific discovery that now underlines the industry.
'Freak of nature,' the guide of the glass-bottomed boat said to my group. Strange logic, because the majority of the coral on the Ningaloo reef is slow growing--taking several hundred years to achieve the massive size that makes the reef what it is--barrier and shelter. In other words, any previous freak of weather that may have caused this sort of massive coral destruction would still be noticeable. Nevermind that coral is all dead immediately around the town and that the death of the coral around town just so coincided with the massive increase of tourism in the area.
I talked to Curt Jenner about this suject a few weeks later one evening aboard Whalesong. He said that the death of the coral coincided with the low season in Coral Bay--so all the caravan parks dump fertilizer and pesticides on their lawns to make things look good for the next season. All run-off goes into the bay, including the contents of any leaking septic tanks.
The man who discovered the correlation between coral spawning and whale shark migration wrote a book on the subject. Dr Geoff Taylor is a medical doctor who took a personal interest in the Whale Sharks and pretty much pioneered their study in WA. Patsy had given me his book to read and he had mentioned the death of coral around coral bay as directly linked with the eflueva from Coral Bay itself. Like Curt, he believed that the town's poor sewage treatment was the cause of all the reef's problems.
Coral Bay was fun, though--I camped out south of the town, illegally I think, for seven days in all, and spent two nights in the Caravan park at the end of the trip, sharing a site with Lauren, one of the passive agressive surfer bums Caroline and I had met on our first day in town.
As it turns out, Lauren and Peter Briers are a married couple who have emigrated from South Africa. They had been camped out, also illegally, on the point just south of Paradise beach for the past two and a half weeks. The night that Caroline left, I came upon them at night, burning a nice fire. They offered me cheap port and told me their tale. Peter's showed me a proper S. African bushman fire, slow burning, hot, smokeless, and using only small branches as fuel.
Peter soon got some work on a fishing boat for a few days. Lauren decided that she wasn't comfortable staying out byherself on the point at night--and I felt like I owed the caravan park some money for all the water I was borrowing from them each day. As it turns out, I shouldn't have been so honest: the water consumption in the caravan park is pretty high, so my measly 3-4 litres a day was but a drop in the bucket.
Either way, I needed a good shower, some laundry action, and I had to get in touch with Curt and Micheline Jenner. When I met this couple and their two kids several weeks back in Freo, they had said that if I was in the area, they would be happy to host me onboard their home, a 44 foot catamaran named the R. V. Whalesong.
'Research Vessel' Whalesong does just that: it goes on the ocean and observes whales in action.
Because my cheap-o mobile carrier didn't get me reception in Coral Bay--only SOS calls--I needed to be near a pay phone. Eventually, after some phone tag, I managed to confirm with Curt that I was making my way to Exmouth on Saturday, June 26th.
One benefit from hanging out with Lauren at the caravan park, waiting for Peter's return, was that I met two of her friends. John and Sinead are two Irish on their way around the country by car--and for ten bucks, I secured myself a seat with them for the 152km trip north to Exmouth.
The trip was uneventful, although there was a heart stopping pause when the car wouldn't respond to the accelerator--something to do with a dirty fuel pump.
But I made it to Exmouth and the Exmouth Marina, where Whalesong was moored.
Exmouth/Tantabiddi
The Jenners research humpback, pygmy, and blue whales year-round from their cat(amaran). They run a non-profit, independent, organization called 'Centre for Whale Research.' As it turns out, they are unique in Australia: no one else conducts year-round whale research, living on the ocean, in the whole country. This is the result of a lot of hard work and gumption on their part.
Okay... a bit of a pause. I'll keep at this tomorrow. Cheers.
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