Coral Bay (WK 7)

Another short drive up the coast to the southern tip of Ningaloo Reef, Coral Bay. I’m sure if we’d visited Coral Bay 30 years ago we’d hate it here, it’s one big caravan park. However, the reef is amazing, the best we’ve seen in Australia (comparable to Lady Elliot Island).

We arrived on 10/05/2021, set up and went for a snorkel. Haven’t seen so many people on a beach for a long time but the bay is huge so we never encountered anyone in the water. As we were putting fins on in the shallows huge fish were circling us and it only got better. The coral was lovely with a huge variety and abundance of fish in about 4 metres of water.

On 11/05/2021 Paul went for a boat dive and manta ray experience and it happened for the first time close up. He also saw, 4 grey reef sharks, 2 turtles and a parrot fish in a coral bomie and the best part was yet to come. Watching a shark from 2m away, on a cleaning station, with her mouth wide open having her teeth cleaned by very brave and fast cleaner wrasse.

After the manta experience, we drove on a 4wd sand road south to Five Fingers reef for a beautiful shore based snorkel in less than 2m water with good visibility. Again, beautiful coral and wonderful fish. My favourite are the tiny iridescent blue fish which hide on the coral making it seem blue and as the fish scatter the coral seems to open up like flower.

On 12/05/2021 we went on a 2 hr snorkel by boat from Coral Bay main beach. Firstly, to a gap between the outer and inner reef called Ashan Cutting and then to the inner reef. Both snorkels were pretty amazing. We also found out why the reef does not have much colour com pared to tropical reefs, it’s because it is sub tropical and so photosynthesis is not as active as in tropical waters such as the Great Barrier Reef. Even so we loved the coral, it is so varied with different colours and shapes. It does seem to be really healthy.

On 13/05/2021 we head further north to Exmouth on the top of Ningaloo for more diving and snorkelling.