Articles > Diving Ningaloo Reef

“We’ve got a manta ray just surfaced, about two hundred feet to starboard”. The voice of Carl, our dive master for the day, betrays the fact that this is by no means an unusual occurrence and certainly nothing to get worked up about. But I’ve never seen a manta ray before so I’m hopping around the boat as giddy as a schoolgirl. “Where, where, where” I yelp, jumping onto the starboard gunwale and scanning the water for any dark shape looming nearby. Then a pair of jet-black wingtips breaks the surface and this majestic creature is suddenly gliding towards us, its mouth agape as it trawls for plankton. These gentle giants are among an astonishing array of marine life that draws divers from all over the world to Ningaloo – Australia’s other great barrier reef.

Beginning at North West Cape by the town of Exmouth in Western Australia, Ningaloo Reef runs south for 160 miles before petering out. In contrast to its more famous Queensland cousin, Ningaloo is a fringing reef, which means it lies much nearer to shore (as close as 100 yards in some places). Tropical reefs this accessible tend to suffer the impact of too much human activity, but Ningaloo’s geographical isolation has allowed it to survive as a pristine marine environment.

The day of my manta ray encounter begins with a dive on Blizzard Ridge, a limestone plateau flat as a counter-top, with small coral bomboras (“bommies”) lined up alongside like so many bar-stools. The spaces between the bommies shelter small groups of snapper, spangled emperor and coral trout, while closer inspection of the corals reveals more furtive creatures like octopus and crayfish, as well as the two biggest moray eels I’ve ever seen. The dive quickly turns into a procession of the oversized: the biggest white-tip reef shark I’ve seen, the biggest lionfish – even the biggest stingray, its seven-foot span revealed as it lifts off from the sand and rockets away. I have to remind myself to keep a look-out for Ningaloo’s smaller treasures, so it’s not until we retrace our route back to the boat that I spy a couple of nudibranchs, tiny miracles of aesthetic design barely two inches long, sporting gorgeous stripes of orange, black and royal blue.

Our next dive is at a site ominously named Labyrinth (in reality just a haphazard collection of bommies that all look much alike). A gentle current carries me over the top of three giant clams regally tinged with shades of purple and green, as well as several sea anemones and their inhabitant families of clownfish – endearing little fellows who guard their homes fiercely and are not above giving the fingers of nosey divers a nip. What at first I think is a moray eel winding its way among the bommies turns out to be an olive sea-snake, a highly venomous six feet long, coloured yellowish khaki and with a black head. It’s a rare encounter, more so for the fact that from the moment it appears until we surface fifteen minutes later the snake follows us everywhere, swimming behind a pair of flippers one moment, gliding between a pair of legs the next. Whenever we stop to examine a coral formation or peek under a ledge, the snake pauses too and fossicks about on the sea floor; then the moment we move off it looks up as if to say “Hey, where’s everybody going?”, and resumes its pursuit. The experience bears out a shared perception among divers at Ningaloo that the marine animals here have not been threatened by humans, and so they react with curiosity rather than fear.

It’s a strange feeling to be rounding off my scuba adventures with a dive not on the reef itself but off a long-abandoned pier. When the US Navy left Exmouth in 1992 (having maintained a base nearby since 1967), their maintenance pier was left in the hands of security contractors who, for reasons unknown, are still paid to keep it gated and guarded (Exmouth dive companies have controlled access to it, but private diving and fishing parties remain strictly forbidden). It is now widely acknowledged as being among Australia’s Top Five dive sites, which explains why I find myself clambering down a set of steel stairs in full scuba rig before taking a ten-foot drop into the ocean.

Swimming through the superstructure of a pier is a lot like a wreck dive, only with girders and pylons instead of hatchways and railings. We descend past a school of barracuda hanging suspended in mid-water, looking menacing the way only barracuda can. Huge estuarine cod drift in and out of view, lionfish flutter, moray eels show their needle-like teeth from holes within the coral formations, crayfish wave feelers from beneath crevices, mantis shrimp cling together in crowded colonies and white-tip reef sharks glide over the sand. Even the pier’s famed frogfish shows itself – a visage remarkably reminiscent of Australia’s former Prime Minister John Howard, all rubbery lips and exuberant eyebrows. By the time we surface an hour later, I’ve counted more different species on a single dive than I’d hope to see in a dozen dives anywhere else. As our dive group parts ways back in Exmouth, everyone is still gabbing about this or that creature they just saw for the first time. A few of the international visitors are on their second or third visit to Ningaloo and still marvelling at how many different marine animals there are to see. A German couple entreat the rest of us to return during the whale shark season (April-June), when a procession of the world’s largest fish (30-50 feet long) make their unhurried way along the coast, inhaling plankton by the ton. It’s impossible not to smile along as they relive for us the jubilation of being dropped overboard in front of three of these languid leviathans, then snorkelling alongside them for several minutes. “Really, we would have been thrilled just to catch sight of a whale shark, and there were three of them we could almost touch and then four manta rays came and swam along with us too”.

Already I have a return visit to Ningaloo in mind, hopefully to coincide with the whale sharks’ arrival. But before leaving this far-flung corner of Western Australia, I’m up for two days of perfect isolation at Ningaloo Reef Retreat, an eco-tourism resort thirty miles out of town, well away from the bright lights of Exmouth and its bustling population of 2,500. Paul, the resort owner, collects me in town and points out shallow bays for easy snorkelling as we drive along, before pulling up at the start of a sandy track that leads to the Reef Retreat. It’s all of one hundred feet from the cluster of tent cabins to the beach and about a hundred more out to the coral. My cabin light and the hot water for my outback camping-style shower are both generated by a single solar cell, a fact that gives me an immense feeling of earth-loving satisfaction. I’ve never even heard of a gas-powered refrigerator, but there’s one here. Fresh water is non-existent at this spot where the desert meets the sea, but a daily delivery from town takes care of everyone’s needs. Food is likewise delivered daily, and according to the guests’ menu preference – snapper fillets, kangaroo steaks and lamb chops for the barbecue and Thai chicken curry are among the selections during my stay, and there’s no shortage of salad and fresh fruit.

There are only six other guests, so it really does feel like a retreat from the rest of the world. It’s nice too after wrangling heavy scuba gear all week to just slip on a mask and fins and potter about among the corals. And in between mealtimes, there’s little else to do but spend quality time in a hammock time with a good book.

On my final afternoon, just before sunset, I pick up one of the resort’s kayaks and paddle out for one last look at Ningaloo. And I’m suddenly struck by the thought that while the rest of the world has to make do without so much as one Great Barrier Reef, Australia has miraculously been blessed with two of them.

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