Monkey Mia & Dolphins

As promised, more memories from Australia. I thought I'd work backwards...for no other reason than I can remember what we did most recently the best. For the earlier stuff from the trip, I will revert to my journal.

For the last few days of our vacation we went to the most touristy stop on our itinerary, Monkey Mia. The Monkey Mia Dolphin Resort was established for and subsists almost entirely on the dolphins that come ashore for daily feedings from the national park rangers. They come ashore because, starting about forty years ago, fisherman and later tourists fed the dolphins. Once a very remote fishing and pearl harvesting area was suddenly inundated with people feeding the dolphins all throughout the day, touching them and swimming with them. The tourists fed them everything from fish to french fries to steak. Despite the obvious problems that come from feeding an animal food they don't normally eat and touching a wild animal, the continual feeding actually endangered the breeding of the dolphins. Generations of dolphins were not learning how to hunt for food themselves and the mothers were not feeding their young. The female dolphins feed there young through an opening on the underside of their bodies in their midsection. If the mothers were constantly going to the shallow water to get fed by beachgoers, the babies no longer had an opportunity to have enough space to get under their mothers to feed. Eventually the babies would starve or get eaten by one of the thousand of sharks in the neighborhood because the dolphins had also stopped hunting in pods or groups, thus disabling their inherent protective hunting technique. All of this was explained by the rangers leading the feedings.

To improve the situation and also allow tourism to continue, the National Parks rangers are now the only people allowed to feed the dolphins and are only allowed to feed them the equivalent of 1/4 of their daily intake. They also only feed female dolphins that come from a line of dolphins that had been inappropriately fed in the past. This translates to the feeding of about five female dolphins. The also only feed before noon with the first feeding starting at 7.30 am, but I think this has more to do with getting tourists to stay overnight in the exorbitantly expensive hotel on the beach's shores instead of them driving the 25 kilometers from the nearest small town where the prices are much lower.

I was incredibly excited about seeing the dolphins up close and in what I thought would be a natural environment. I also thought I would get the opportunity to snorkel or dive with them so I was disappointed, but could understand. We had the beachouse closest to the dolphin feeding area and it had a great front porch so I wasn't too disappointed because it was a great way to end the vacation. I couldn't help, but feel a bit silly, though, for spending so much money to see the animal kingdom's equivalent to welfare recipients or, excuse the turn of phrase, but dolphin white trash. I mean, think about it. One of the mothers we took so many pictures of had lost something like five of seven children from malnutrition and we watched as the current child had to squeak and prod the mother to deeper water so he could eat. Instead, she played it up for the cameras and raced up and down the beach for the tourists and could have for an hour had the lead ranger not insisted on speeding up the feeding so that the mother would leave the shallows.

The main difference I noticed in going to a tourist trap was the high amount of Asian tourist...mostly Japanese. On the national parks tour outside of Darwin and in Cairns, I had heard tour operators comment that the biggest impact the recession was having was the decrease in Asian and mainly Japanese tourists. In the next breath, though, they would shrug and say that at least they didn't have to put up with their aggressive and sometimes ignorant behavior. One guide put it that they seem to ignore their normally obedient and group oriented culture and morph into aggressive photographers with selective hearing. I thought the comment funny albeit a bit stereotypical...until I got to Monkey Mia. For instance, some members of all Asian tour groups would just go out into the water to take pictures of the dolphins and remain their even after repeatedly being asked by the rangers to leave the water. I was secretly proud of my husband who leaned forward, probably somewhat enabled by his Dutch cultural stereotype towards directness, and said something like, "Hey lady in the plaid hat with the video camera, that means you too."

I should explain that, for the feedings, all tourists have to leave the water to cut down on some of the activity and 'noise' in the water because for the dolphins' incredibly sensitive 'hearing', the extra people in water has the effect of making them more nervous. It also eliminates the possibility of touching the dolphins which had started to trigger the dolphins to bite in the past. Volunteers are then picked from the audience to feed.

One Japanese woman was picked from the audience to feed a dolphin. She cheerily came forward and fed the dolphin and then bent down and pet the dolphin like you would a dog even after strict instruction not to touch the animals. The immediate admonishments from the staff and the gasps from the crowd didn't seem to dampen her cheerfulness as she sloshed her way back through the shallows to the beach to be received by the rest of her tour group with pats on the back, vigorous head nods and wide smiles.

I tried to upload a video of one of the baby dolphins trying to catch his own fish, but it must have been too large of a file because it just wouldn't load. Instead, I am posting one close up picture of one of the female dolphins and another of the crowd gathered for a 7.30 am feed.

Dutch lessons...again

I started taking Dutch lessons again last night. Before I go on, don't worry, I will write more about our trip to Australia this weekend, I just wanted to write this since I haven't written in awhile and, honestly, to relieve some guilt.

My friend, whom I met about two years ago on our previous attempt at Dutch classes, and I thought it was finally time to stop making excuses and start courses again. It could be our pending four year anniversary of living in the country and the ever mounting guilt at living in a country and not being fluent in the local language yet. That's not the guilt I mentioned before so hold on.

This time, we went for a Dutch for Expats class taught for English speakers. As the other members of our (coincidentally) all female class filed in, I felt like this class would be worth the slightly higher price tag. I was the first to arrive thanks to my husband doing me the big favor of driving me the ten kilometers across town and potentially giving up the last remaining parking spot on our always crowded street so that I didn't have to take public transport when my imminent jet lag kicked in.

The instructor greeted me in Dutch and, while surprised and having a bit of reversed culture shock after speaking only English for a month, I responded as best I could and took a seat. Just as I was thinking, "Okay, this is good. The teacher is speaking mainly Dutch. This is the best way to learn. I've been told that. I just need to be open to it"... the next student walked in and her eyes bulged and mouth dropped open in a nervous shock when greeted in Dutch, the typical expat reaction to Dutch and sported by me for my first two years here and still my default reaction if I don't consciously make an effort to relax my face and breath. As I watched and listened to the other members of the class excitedly chat to each other (they had all taken the previous class together) in English and recognized the English, Australian, and British accents of the women all roughly my age, I sighed in relief. This is going to be a fun class. My last class closer resembled the UN General Assembly and English was sporadic.

We eased into the course by introducing ourselves and explaining what we did on vacation. As I had just explained this the day before to my Dutch mother-in-law, I felt reasonably comfortable and was okay with being asked to go first. I was interrupted by the last student arriving to the class and asked to stop so I scanned the room to see expressions of mild shock and panic on the faces of my classmates. For the first time, I had actually impressed (actually intimidated) others with my Dutch! To their wowed comments, I impulsively spouted, "My mother-in-law only speaks Dutch with me"...somehow explaining that I must get a lot of practice.

Not only is that statement a bald faced lie, but I also failed to interject that not only do we only see her once every few months, but also that I had lived in The Netherlands for close to four years, much longer than most of them. Where did that outburst come from? And why did I feel the need to wrongly blame my mother-in-law to these strangers instead of admit that I am horrible with languages and more than a tad lazy? Thankfully, my friend didn't bust me on my lie, but she had all right to. Does anyone else have verbal diarrhea when meeting new people? I should have just blamed jet lag, but that would have be another lie.

Ningaloo and Margaret River

Hi All! It's been a few days...my apologies for that. We haven't really had much access to the internet lately.

Since I last wrote, we've been on a wild winery outing down in Margaret River in southeastern Australia. We went on a great, but a bit out there wine and beer tour and then followed it up by going off-roading the next day thanks to our navigational system. Our Tom Tom navigational equipment sent us down a road it swore was paved only to experience a bumpy mud road in our Mitsubishi Lancer rental that was flooded halfway through our 75 kilometer trip down it. We got to see some emus and kangaroos in the wild along with some great scenes of the countryside, but seeing wild kangaroos jump across the road is not exactly what you want to see as the sun drops over the road and you are in a rental car...as opposed to a rental SUV like the rest of the tourists had.

We then headed up north to Exmouth for a few days of diving. We've dove with probably a dozen sharks - white tip reef sharks and a nurse shark - along with more fish than I can mention here all the while hearing whales off in the distance on their annual migration. We finally saw a pod of dolphins up close (from a pier) yesterday on their nightly fishing of travallis. The travallis literally jump out of the water trying to get away from the five dolphins that were circling to round them up. And just the day before we saw a whale breech into the air off into the distance and do a back flop. That is as close as we've gotten so far, though. All and all, it has been a great time here. We head out tomorrow morning to hopefully swim with dolphins in the wild tomorrow at Monkey Mia before heading to Perth to fly home. It is going to be sad to leave this country!

Abyss Miss

I chickened out of the night dive in the end. I managed to get over how creeped out I was by all of the fish circling the boat lights, but gave up when I saw the dive couple in front of us disappear below us after getting just a few meters away. They looked like they had just gotten sucked into a black abyss and I just wasn't ready for that. I know, it sounds really silly...I can happily go in the same ocean during the day...oh well. Having only done one dive yesterday, I was sufficiently bored and ready to dive today. I had planned for 3 dives, but ended up with two after the second was a one hour dive and I was feeling my back. Just one more night on the boat, I think, and a day left of diving. I am completely losing track of the days out here.

Here are some more pictures...a gray reef shark that was swimming in about 5 meters of water; two hump nosed parrot fish...I think that is the name...they sure were big and angry looking or so I hear from my husband whom actually saw them. The variety of color combinations and types of fish and coral out here never cease to fascinate me. Like with the parrot fish, I wonder how those parts got put together and survived thousands of years of evolution. And there are some things out here in various neon colors that probably existed in that color before the word neon was even coined and, on top of that, how do they keep from getting eaten when their bodies are a giant neon sign asking to be eaten?

Back at Cod Hole

So...the sea sickness tablets did the trick for me. I kept my dinner - a nice piece of pork with cracklin' on a bed of sweet potatoes and a bowl of fruit and chocolate ice cream topped with a kind of sugar brittle - but we did not make it out the Ospry Reef in the end. The water was just too rough...something like 30 knots or something, but that doesn't really mean much to me.

Unfortunately, there were more than a few casualties last night. Thankfully, none were in our room. One poor guy, an Italian fellow that just joined us yesterday afternoon ended up running for the outdoor deck around midnight, with is hands squeezed over his mouth and cheeks puffed only to slip on the wet deck where all of the diving equipment is kept, hit is knees and then slide across the floor. He was finally stopped when his forehead hit the railing door that was closed to keep people from going down the back steps and off the boat. Just about that time, his stomach made it's way finally north and his dinner went everywhere. I heard this story from a luck crew member that witness it firsthand and had the lucky job of clean up.

So we went back to Cod Hole and most are out on a Cod feeding dive. I dove just before lunch and had the great luck to see both a white tipped reef shark and a gray reef shark. We have two more dives today including a night dive so I am sitting this one out.

On the boat

We are into day 4 of our 7 day liveaboard. It's been great so far. The boat was not full so I shared a 4 person bunk room with another woman for 3 days. The boat is now full, though, so it will be tighter quarters and a very busy diving area. I would have been fine getting off the boat and onto dry land complete with our own private room, but my husband is loving the boat and as many as 5 dives per day. Growing up near water and used to being out on a fishing boat with his dad, my husband is loving it here. Gratefully, the other guests, the staff and the food are great. The diving has been really nice. I have been keeping dives to 3 per day because my back just gets too tired otherwise.

We are now at Lizard Island and head out to Osprey Island tonight. We are crossing the open ocean tonight so a bumpy night is expected and I am already planning on my seasickness tablet after dinner tonight.

I am posting a picture from our Potato Cod feeding. We were joined by two massive potato cod whom obviously know of the feeding area that several dive operators use. The other picture is of a squid or cuddlefish that was about the size of my forearm. We've seen them before, but not this big.