Shark Bay

William Dampier sailed into Shark Bay in 1616, naming the area after the abundance of sharks he saw. On a three hour cruise from Monkey Mia we saw none. But we did see a few dolphins and a handful of Dugong.  Unfortunately it’s a bit early for the 10,000 Dugong who call Shark Bay home, to be active. That’s about 12% of the world population of these interesting animals. They live here because of the huge areas of sea grass in the bay.

While the cruise on the 18 m sailing cataraman was disappointing the area made up for it with two other attractions.

Shell beach is a 60 km long beach like no other. It is made up of billions, and billions of tiny shells of a unique cockle which thrives here in the ultra-high salinity of the water in this bay. It is one of only two beaches in the world which are made up entirely of shells - absolutely no sand at all.  There are so many shells that the have banked up to 7-10 metres deep. An amazing sight.  The older layers of the shells have compacted so much that they have been sawn into blocks for building houses. True!

The other amazing thing in this area is the stromatolites.  Oh, yes, you say, what are stromatolites.?  Because the waters are ultra saline there are cyanobacteria high grow in mats and form  with other interacting bacteria microbiological “mats” and sometimes form stromatolites whatcha grown into rock-like structure. Now the really interesting thing is that these organisms are the same as those that lived 3.5 million years ago and which helped change to toxic atmosphere to one which could support life. Stromatolites converted CO2 into carbon and oxygen thus allowing other primitive things to live and grow, and of course support the development of life as we know it.  Shark Bay is one of the very few places on earth where these life forms still exist. Wow!