Monkey Mia Ocean Cruise

Hi everyone, a great day today.  We drove over to Monkey Mia (about 27 kms away) & had a beautiful buffet breakfast, then I went on a 2 1/2 hour nature cruise at Shark Bay on the catamaran "Aristocat 2" pictured below.   I saw Dolphins, turtles, dugongs rays & a shark (tiger).  There was only about 20 of us on board & the crew were great.  Once again very hard to take photos through water, & the dugongs only surface for about 15 seconds.  They are very big animals, & are vegetarians, they only eat sea grass.

Volunteers were called to hoist the mainsail

And up she goes!

This is the Skipper- instead of sitting on the chair he stood on it the whole trip with his upper body through the hatch and steered & controlled the speed with his feet!

Pearl farm- a floating pontoon with pearl beds around it.

Pulling into the pearl farm, we visited there for about 45 minutes.

Demonstration of various pearl shells

Workers harvesting the shells

Ahoy there- me on the pearl pontoon next to the yacht

In order to spot the sea animals, this crew member climbed the mast to get a better view.  He then directed the skipper where to steer so we could get a better view.  

Dugong surfacing

Relaxing in the netting, lots of fun!

Different netting at the rear of the boat. This is going slow, the boat then sped right up & these guys had to hold on for dear life.