Why protect Ningaloo?
Roger Smith
Roger Smith
From Vlamingh Head Lighthouse one balmy evening I saw an ocean erupt with breaching whales. It brought home to me just how important it is to protect Ningaloo and Exmouth Gulf on Western Australia’s north-west coast.
Perched on an isolated hill at the northern end of the Cape Range, the lighthouse stands 50m above the sea and 300m away from a foreshore, beside one of the world’s greatest humpback highways. Each evening you’ll find Ningaloo devotees standing near the lighthouse watching the sun sink into the Indian Ocean. Following this tradition, in September 2022 a small group of us went to the car park near the lighthouse to watch the sunset. We were in for a surprise.
The Indian Ocean filled the horizon to the west. Waves breaking nearby marked where the outer edge of Ningaloo Reef comes closest to land. We could easily trace the coastline northward to the tip of North West Cape. From there, the coast swung south into the placid waters of Exmouth Gulf that stretched into the darkening east. This gulf – Ningaloo’s humpback whale nursery – is under sustained threat from intensive industrialisation.
On that evening, the entire 180-degree view of the Indian Ocean was alive with the spectacle of breaching humpbacks. Wherever we looked, from the outer edge of Ningaloo Reef all the way out to the horizon, hundreds of whales rocketed into the air and then slammed back into the ocean. These were some of the 40,000 migrating humpbacks that pass through Ningaloo and Exmouth Gulf each year.
Then we heard an explosion – similar to a truck’s air brakes but far louder and more forceful – and looked down in time to see the ‘blow’ of a large humpback dissipating nearby. Surprisingly, the whale was inside the reef, clearly visible only 20m from the shore, leaving us wondering why a bus-sized animal would place itself in danger of stranding in the shallow water.
The answer came quickly when we saw a tiny calf: this was a tentative mother escorting her youngster on the first leg of a 5000km journey from its Exmouth Gulf nursery south to Antarctica. She drifted cautiously, occasionally thrashing her tail to power herself off the bottom. Clearly she was protecting her calf from the dangers lurking outside the reef including orcas, sharks and the sex-crazed male humpbacks who were throwing their weight around in the deeper water.
We watched this precious pair drift quietly out of sight and into the sunset. I couldn’t help wondering where that mother will go to protect her newborns if they industrialise Exmouth Gulf.
You can help protect Ningaloo at protectningaloo.org.au
Read more from Roger’s Treading Lightly column.
