Monkey Mia

Visited: early wet season

Recommendation: This area is phenomenal for wildlife. You can see so many hard to find animal species here. It is worthy of a dedicated trip and you should stay a week at least.

Green Sea Turtle (Chelonia mydas)

Monkey Mia is the commercial and tourist centre in the area of Shark Bay. People go there specifically because dolphins have been coming into the bay for many, many years. It's now a well-managed attraction. You have to pay to get in, and early in the morning, if the dolphins are around then the rangers will give them some food and they can interact with people. So even though it was off-season and the town was quiet, it was still quite busy with people wanting to see the dolphins. There's a short jetty you can stand on and watch what else is happening. I got great views of several Green Sea Turtles. About 6 of them live under the jetty and as they have to come up the surface to breathe, if you stand there long enough then you will see them. There are also Loggerhead and Hawksbill Turtles around at times.

Indo-Pacific Bottlenose Dolphin (Tursiops aduncus)

You could be excused for spending all your time waiting for dolphins but there are other things to see. Next up, I headed out into the dunes. There are some not well advertised or signposted walks around the area and I went on the Wulyibidi Yaninyina walk into the area behind the town. It gave great views of the area and brings you out on the beach to the east of the dolphin viewing area. My target up here was the Western Grasswren. I knew they are lots of them around Monkey Mia and I did find a small group here. They weren't very obliging but at least I got good views of them. The Purple-backed Fairywren, however, were bouncing around as if begging to be photographed.

Brown Goshawk (Accipiter fasciatus)

Western Grasswren (Amytornis textilis)

Purple-backed Fairywren (Malurus assimilis)

Emu (Dromaius novaehollandiae)

After emerging from the dunes, I wandered along the beach looking for waders. The tide was out and the beach was covered with very shallow water making it perfect for feeding birds.

I turned and looked back to the dunes and I noticed an Emu coming out. That was most unusual in my experience. Anyway, I walked slowly towards it and to my amazement, it approached. It walked out across the shallow water and the expanse of beach towards me and actually came right up close. It wasn't aggressive, it just stood and looked at me. After a while of this peaceful Mexican standoff, it sank to its knees and started bathing which was just glorious to watch. It wriggled around in the sand and then stood up and had a good shake, did some preening and after a while it just wandered away back along the beach

I walked around this area a few times and there was always a group of birds sitting out on the furthest patch of sand. As I headed out there, lots of ghost crabs ran around in front of me. I had to walk quite a long way to get to the group of cormorants. I wandered around, sort of meandering in between crabs and stopping to watch a young osprey sitting on the ground yowling for presumably somebody to come and feed it.

Australasian Osprey (Pandion haliaetus cristatus)

After the osprey took off, I continued to walk on the seaward side of the cormorants and they were just not letting me anywhere near them. So I went on the beach side of them and they were much more tolerant of me. While the group was largely Pied Cormorants, there were also a few Little Pieds there too.

Pied Cormorant (Phalacrocorax varius)

Little Pied Cormorant (Phalacrocorax melanoleucos)

There was also a whole load of terns further on, behind the cormorants. I approached very slowly and the terns for a change were also quite tolerant on the sea side of the beach. I could see that there were five species there which was very cool. Photos are below.

Caspian Tern (Sterna caspia)

Lesser Crested Tern (Sterna bengalensis)

Great Crested Tern (Sterna bergii)

Little Tern (Sterna albifrons)

Australian Fairy Tern (Sterna nereis)

Over several trips to the beach area, I spotted quite a few waders, some resident and some migratory. With a long lens and quiet feet I was very happy with the photographs I got here.

Red-capped Plover (Charadrius ruficapillus)

Bar-tailed Godwit (Limosa lapponica)

Common Greenshank (Tringa nebularia)

Red-necked Stint (Calidris ruficollis)

Greater Sand Plover (Charadrius leschenaultii)

Pacific Gull (Larus pacificus)

Pied Oystercatcher (Haematopus longirostris)

Australian Pelican (Pelecanus conspicillatus)

One of the best wildlife experiences I had in Shark Bay was going out on a catamaran into the bay at Monkey Mia. There is only one operator here that is licensed to take people out to look for Dugongs. I really like them as they are involved in different projects to protect the marine area. First the boat sails around the coast and you can get a good look at the Osprey nests, turtles and more dolphins.

Then they take you to go and look for Dugongs. These are a sort of mythical sea cow creatures and are critically endangered. After many windy days, it was finally calm on the water and incredibly beautiful. We sailed out to the seagrass fields to look for the Dugongs. They're not as playful as the dolphin and I wondered if we would actually see anything.

But, there were there and in number. They were relaxing and sleeping just under the surface of the water, breaking the water every now and again to breathe. Sometimes we were lucky enough to see the fluke of the tail, entering the water a bit like you see when whales dive. There were several mothers with calves and one of the best sightings we had was seeing a fairly young calf suckling its mother. This is what these photographs are below.

It was a magical experience just to see this amazing animals. We also saw other dolphins, sea snakes, cormorants and terns. I was hopeful we might see some seabirds but the water was just too shallow and too calm. It is definitely worth doing this trip if you come to Shark Bay.

Dugong (Dugong dugon)

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