Swimming with giants at Ningaloo Reef

The sea churns restlessly as the enormous dorsal fin scythes through the water towards our dive boat. I'm still fiddling with my mask and snorkel when the tanned young deckhand barks out the order. "Group A, get ready, here she comes. Okay, into the water - now."

It seems counter-intuitive to jump into the path of a giant shark but that is precisely what I and a dozen other nervous snorkellers have paid $365 to do.

We are in deep blue water just beyond Ningaloo Reef, off the coast of Western Australia, and we have come here with the express intention of swimming alongside the world's biggest fish.

This is one of the few places on the planet where whale sharks, which can reach up to 18m in length and weigh 15 tons, are known to regularly congregate in large numbers.

Despite their chilling, shark-like profile, the creatures feed solely on plankton and are harmless to humans - unless you are unfortunate enough to be swiped by the animal's enormous tail fin.

Their annual migration from the depths of the Indian Ocean to Ningaloo Reef, between March and June, is unpredictable, so the dive boats use spotter planes to help locate them.

Stepping into the water, I find myself surrounded by a gaggle of flailing snorkellers, fins and arms kicking wildly. I get my bearings and begin swimming away from the group, following the raised arm of our guide, Kelly.

I'm trying to peer through a champagne cloud of bubbles when the whale shark appears out of the deep blue void. It is an electrifying moment. It - or rather she, for this one is a female - is huge. Her frog-like mouth is a metre wide, her body 6m long.

Her grey-blue ridged flanks are covered in white, domino-like spots reminiscent of an Aboriginal dot painting.

I hang motionless as the creature glides by, her piggy little black eyes seemingly oblivious of our presence.

Swimming alongside, I maintain a gap of 3m just as the crew had told us, but after a few minutes of sustained kicking my chest is heaving and my leg muscles burning. I drop away with the rest of the group and the gentle giant disappears into the inky gloom.

Moments later we are picked up by the dive boat. The skipper manoeuvres us into the path of the whale shark once again, and we jump back into the water for another snorkel.

By the end of the day this procedure has been repeated eight times and we have found a further two whale sharks. Most people are exhausted, but elated too. Excited chatter fills the boat.

"I was amazed how tolerant it was given that we just dropped in on top of her," said Andrea, a 24-year-old student from Glasgow.

"I was thinking 'where is it, where is it' and then it was 'aargh, it's coming straight for me'," said her boyfriend, Neil, from Belfast, squinting in the sunshine.

Just as we were getting ready to head for home, one of the whale sharks appeared from nowhere, stuck its broad, pale snout out of the water a few feet away, and nuzzled up against the side of the boat.

I had been worried that the whale sharks had felt harassed by all the attention, but this surprising gesture suggested otherwise. If they feel hassled, they will dive down deep straightaway, said crew member Brad.

They can leave whenever they want.

Ningaloo Reef stretches for 260km mid-way along the coast of Western Australia, about 1200km north of Perth. It is a spectacular turquoise ribbon which boasts more than 250 species of coral and 500 species of tropical fish.

Unlike its much larger cousin, the Great Barrier Reef over on Australia's eastern seaboard, it is little known internationally and barely developed for tourism.

The nearest town to the reef, Exmouth, supports just three dive shops and six whale shark watching operations. Contrast that with the dozens of operators in Queensland, who ferry thousands of tourists a day in huge white gin palaces.

The other big difference is that though it can take more than an hour to reach the reefs and coral atolls of the Great Barrier Reef, much of Ningaloo Reef lies just a few metres off the beach. The reef protects an enormous warm water lagoon which on average is less than 4m deep.

Ningaloo is also renowned for the sheer size of the animals it attracts.

It's a sort of underwater equivalent of the Masai Mara.

"We get the Big Three out here: whale sharks, manta rays and humpback whales," said dive instructor Allison Richards. "There are sea turtles, sea snakes and killer whales, and we often see pods of 500 spinner dolphins."

The next morning found me on another boat, heading out of the tiny coastal village of Coral Bay, past the scrubby headland of Point Maud and into turquoise Batemans Bay, in search of manta rays. It only took a few minutes to locate one - again with the help of a spotter plane.

Manta rays are extraordinary creatures - with their black and white wings and graceful flapping motion, they resemble giant underwater bats. This one was about 3m from wing tip to wing tip.

"They can grow up to nearly 7m," said skipper Stuart Robinson.

"At that size they weigh two tons."

The ray ploughed back and forth along the sandy bottom of a shallow bay, hoovering up invisible micro-organisms from the soupy water. After skimming along the seabed for a minute or two, the animal banked and turned like a Stealth fighter, coming to within a couple of metres of our dangling flippers.

"Unlike most rays they don't have a sting in their tail, so they are harmless to us," Robinson said. "You wouldn't believe it but they are excellent jumpers - you often see them propel their whole body out of the water."

We headed back to land, and Coral Bay appeared as a smudge on the shoreline.

A tiny settlement of sand roads, caravan parks and a few shack-like holiday homes, it looks like a holiday resort out of the 1960s.

Locals and visitors pad around town barefoot and mud-splattered four-wheel-drives are parked on the beach.

The village's only watering hole, the Coral Bay Hotel, is full of big bearded men with skin tanned the colour of chocolate.

Hanging above the bar is a 2m-long tubular object resembling an enormous brown aubergine.

"A lot of visitors think it's a didgeridoo," said Rachel, the young barmaid. "They don't believe us when we tell them it's a whale's penis."

Coral Bay must qualify as one of the remotest holiday resorts on earth. To the west lies the yawning vastness of the Indian Ocean, stretching all the way to Africa. To the east, an unimaginably huge expanse of outback scrub and desert.

But to really get away from it all I headed to Ningaloo Reef Retreat, a collection of luxurious canvas tents hidden in the dunes of Cape Range National Park, 136km north of Coral Bay.

The tents, which have timber floors, cottage-style wooden furniture and an en suite outdoor bathroom complete with pump-action shower and naturally composting loo, are extremely comfortable.

Tumble out of bed in the morning and you can be snorkelling on the reef within two minutes. The first time I dipped my head under the water I disturbed a magnificent black eagle ray.

White-tipped reef sharks prowl the shallows [they are harmless unless prodded or poked] and the coloured corals harbour countless types of fish, from stargazers and moon wrasse to spotted gobies and yellow trumpet fish.

There's almost as much action on land as there is underwater. Kangaroos hopped through the scrub as I hiked up nearby Mundu Mundu Creek, a spectacular gash in the range which typifies the harsh beauty of Outback Australia.

At Yardie Creek, a short drive south of the safari camp, a broad channel of freshwater reaches deep into the rugged hills. Ospreys soared above the ochre-coloured cliffs, white egrets patrolled the shallows and Caspian terns hunched into the wind down on the deserted white beach.

Wandering along the foreshore I startled a pair of blue spotted rays resting in the shallows. As I strolled further along the beach I suddenly noticed some movement at my feet.

I stooped down to see a tiny flipper appear from the sand, followed by a freckled grey head - a freshly hatched turtle was emerging into the world for the first time. It was followed swiftly by another and then another, until the beach was crawling with tiny turtles, scrambling towards the water's edge like clockwork toys.

If this had happened on Australia's east coast, I'd have been surrounded by dozens of camera-clicking tourists and marshalled behind barriers by national park rangers. It was another reminder, if one was needed, of what an extraordinary place this part of Western Australia is.

* Nick Squires travelled as a guest of the Australian Tourist Commission

Swimming with whale sharks: Ningaloo Blue Dive, Exmouth tel: +618 9949 1119

Swimming with manta rays: Coral Bay Adventures, Coral Bay tel: +618 9942 5955

Ningaloo Reef Retreat: Cape Range National Park tel: +618 9949 1776
email: info@ningalooreefretreat.com

Accommodation: $245pp/night to stay in a tent, including all food and snorkelling and kayaking tours. Alternatively, you can sleep in a swag beneath the stars for NZ$177pp/night.