Day 4 - Shark Bay World Heritage Area

Ok - Day 4 we decided to take it easy. This meant a 7am start... go figure :)

We drove out to Monkey Mia for the first dolphin feeding for the day - to find this girl - Nikki - who was there with a baby when I was here with the kids 14 years ago! She is also in calf now, and they are hopeful that this one will work out alright. Apparently she is not a very good mother and her babies tend to die. Those that don't get eaten by Tiger Sharks!
There were also several superb looking pelicans on the beach, minding their own business but being stirred up y some of the Asian guests.

We booked a cruise on the Arisocat - a twin-hulled catamaran that specialises in finding dugongs, sat back at the cafe and had a latte while we waited in the warm morning sunshine...

Now - why is Shark Bay a World Heritage Area I hear you ask? There are a few reasons. Firstly, it is an ongoing geological process. Over thousands of years, sediments and broken down shells and skeletons of marine life have been trapped by seagrasses to form large seagrass banks, which are the largest in the world. These seagrass beds support one of the largest and most important dogong populations in the world. There are about 16,000 of them in the waters here... but I can assure you it took a lot for us to find the three we found. However thanks to Anthony's skills up the mast, we did find and follow them. I was rapt - have never seen dugongs before! We also saw a turtle and a manta ray, and a couple of dolphins played with us on the way out. The weather was perfect, the sea was calm and crystal clear, and it was a fantastic morning.
On the way, we visited a black pearl farm (VERY beautiful but VERY expensive), and got to see the stunning Peron cliffs, part of the Francois Peron peninsula... the red cliffs meet the pristine white sand and the turquoise blue water.

After that we headed back to the ranch for a bit of a nap, then out to the Peron homestead and shearing shed and then out to Eagle Bluff to see the sun set over the still, glassy waters.

One of the other reasons this is a World Heritage area is that there are several hypersaline pools in which stromatolites grow. These are ancient organisms, about 3000 years old. In preCambrian times, 600 million years ago, these were the dominant form of life... but look at them now - no ipods or imacs... they just basically sit there. We will go there in the morning so photos tomorrow!
Other reasons are that it's one of the most important breeding grounds for loggerhead turtles, and that it has become part of a project to eradicate introduced vermin and bring several native species back from the brink of extinction.