This was day 3 of our trip, and it was a big one for one simple reason: DOLPHINS!!!
Monkey Mia is home to the famous wild Bottlenose
Dolphins that swim right up to shore every morning for a free bite to eat. And
no, there aren’t any monkeys. There’s legend of a monkey jumping off a sailors
boat and making it to shore, and “Mia” is the Indigenous word for “home”. They
should really think about changing the name to “Dolphin Mia”, that’s much less
misleading. Anyways, back to the dolphins…
Every morning the dolphins show up around
7:00 am for a free meal. As cool as this sight is, it’s obviously not natural
to teach these intelligent animals such bad habits. They’ve reformed it over
the years, back in the 70’s you could just buy a bucket of fish and go out to
the beach, feed the dolphins, and basically give them a big dolphin hug, if you
wanted to.
Now it’s well ran, with several employees and
a group of volunteers, to make sure no dolphins are hugged. Even though we
dream about hugging dolphins, it’s not good for them, and they can catch our
diseases. So DON’T HUG DOLPHINS! And while you’re at it, don’t wear sunscreen either;
it burns their little dolphin eyes.
These dolphin guards take their jobs very
seriously. As Matt found out first hand. He was the first to run down to greet
the dolphins, but his dolphin lovefest was cut short by a dolphin guard repeatedly
screaming from down the beach “GET AWAY FROM THE DOLPHINS!”. We didn’t realize
you couldn’t just wait down at the water’s edge for the dolphins. You have to
stay back about a 100 feet away from the water at the dolphin information desk.
They do this because the dolphins will think it’s feeding time, but feed time
won’t come for another hour, and we don’t want to mislead any dolphins.
Finally, feeding time came, and we rushed
down to the beach along with a hundred other tourists to meet our aquatic
mammal brethren, or should I say sister-en, because they only feed the females.
The dolphins are completely wild, and will swim right up to your knees. It’s
really exciting, even if we are teaching bad habits. But the excitement is cut
short once again by a dolphin guard who drones on and on about dolphins in an
inaudible microphone. All we can think is, “Just feed the freaking dolphins!”
and finally they did, but of course, we weren’t picked to feed them.
4 volunteers, with a bucket of fish each, wade
out to the dolphins and pick from the eager crowd, a few lucky dolphin lovers get
to feed them. It helps if you are really old, really young, or really hot.
Cassie should have shown more skin on that frigid morning at 8am. It would have
helped our chances. We were really disappointed they didn’t pick us: we were
there first, we love dolphins (it’s Matt’s spirit animal, after all), and we
even pretended to laugh at all their stupid dolphins jokes.
At the same time the dolphins are being fed,
giant pelicans are lurking around for a free meal as well. A volunteer lures
the pelicans away with a decoy bucket of fish so they don’t bother the precious
dolphins. The pelicans shouldn’t be overlooked. They’re massive, and quite
impressive.
Shortly after the feeding, the crowds and
dolphins dissipate. But if you hang around, a few dolphins linger by the shore,
which is nice because there are about 100 less people to share them with.
We’ve met people who were disappointed by
Monkey Mia, but we thought it was pretty cool and one of the most memorable
sights on the west coast. Just don’t show up thinking you’re going to have a
deep heart-connection with your spirit animal. It’s all business for these
dolphins: they show up, they eat, and they leave. There are no tricks or
dolphin hugs.
After all the dolphin excitment, we jumped
back on the tour bus, or “Landshark” as our group named it (Thank you, Matt…).
We drove to Ocean Park, an awesome little open-air aquarium that houses all
kinds of fish, sea snakes, sea turtles, one very interesting, color-changing
squid (which was Cassie’s favorite), and a whole bunch of sharks. There was
also one very big Tiger Shark.
The enormous outdoor shark tank was very
cool, and something we had never seen before. It looked like a set from the
Kevin Costner blockbuster movie: “Waterworld”. The tank was made of corrugated
metal and wood, and there was even an old, rusty windmill in the background,
and of course lots of man-eating sharks. A large walkway stretches over the
shark tank so you can only view the sharks from above. This makes the presence
of the Tiger Shark even more eerie, as only its giant dorsal fin can be seen.
After a tour of the more basic sea creatures,
we got to see them feed the sharks, which was AWESOME! They tied a dead fish
onto a wooden pole and dipped it into the water until a feeding frenzy
ensued. Deadly animals eating
things is always awesome. Another great thing about Ocean Park is that they
really seem to care about the animals, instead of a profit. So go here and
support the little guys and their ferocious man-eating sharks.
Next stop was the Stromatolites. Basically,
these are underwater colonies of microorganisms that live on strange rock
formations. They are the oldest living organisms on the planet and are billions
of years old. They created Oxygen before it existed naturally in our
atmosphere. They aren’t particularly cute, nor do they attack dangling dead
fish on a stick, but they are cool, and we wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for
them, so they are worth a visit. There’s a triangular-shaped pier that is
constructed over them, offering great views of these odd formations.
Of course, it’s hard to follow up dolphins
cruising past your legs and a shark feeding frenzy, but you can’t help but tip
your hat to something that’s older than air. Well done, Stromatolites, well
done old friend.
