Lathams News: DAY 81 – SNORKLING AT TURQUOISE BAY…

Reef snorkeling times today were from around 8am to 12.15pm. Ian and Kathy were up early and ready to go. I hadn’t had a particularly good nights sleep, and it was quite windy and cool, this morning so I really wanted to wait an extra hour or two before I went down to Turquoise Bay.

Turquoise Bay - stunning

Kathy is extremely sensitive to the sun, so I could quite understand them wanting to get down there before the heat of the day.

Long walk down the beach to snorkel

Ian and Kathy after a snorkel at Turquoise Bay

Steve at Turquoise Bay

Snorkeling on Ningaloo Reef,

We had quite a walk along the beach to get to the safe area of the beach to snorkel. It was hard walking too as the beach is on quite an incline, and the sand is very loose so you sink right into it. You get a good workout just walking up to the part of the beach you want to snorkel in.

We finally got into the water, and Barb joined us. What a magical experience.

Swimming with the fish

Steve snorkeling

The fish life was amazing, all shapes, colours and sizes, and many them pretty colours at that, ranging from tiny iridescent blues to fluro yellows and every colour in between.

It was quite surreal to be swimming with large schools of fish as we snorkeled over the reef.

The coral wasn’t as large as I thought it would be but there were still some amazing shapes, sizes and colours to be seen here. We would have spent a good hour or more just snorkeling over the reef and photographing it.

From here we all went back to the Milyering Discovery Centre to check out their displays and watch a few video’s of the area. All very interesting, and it helped us recognize some of the fish the following day when we went snorkelling again.

Whilst we were here we also bought a lovely 3D card of the coral and fish to send home to our grandchildren.

After visiting the discovery centre, Ian and Kathy headed back to the van, whilst John and Barb and Steve and I went down to the picnic area at Lakeside Beach to have our cheese and crackers. It was extremely windy and everything had to be held down to stop it blowing away.

John and Barb left soon after we had eaten, but Steve was keen to get his fishing rod out of the car and have a couple of casts. He wasn’t really prepared for fishing, no bait, just a lure which is all you are allowed to use here anyway, so I ended up back in the car as it was so windy, and we walked down to the beach to throw in a line. He was only going to do about 10 casts.

Forty minutes later, he arrived back at the car with his fishing rod and three threadfin salmon. He had a grin from ear to ear, especially since they were all legal size. He had had a few more strikes too, but wasn’t able to keep the others.

Super excited with his catch

We headed home to clean his catch, and to check on our awning as the wind had been howling all afternoon. Fortunately when we got home, we found that we were pretty protected from that howling wind, so our van hadn’t coped too much of a battering at all.

Steve cleaned his fish and filleted them, set up the weber and put on a leg of port for dinner, and then it was time to head back up onto our sand or rock dune to watch the end of another day, and watch that big beautiful ball of orange sun set over the water again. Once more, we enjoyed watching the whales at play, and the reef shark cruise by.