Creatures of Shark Bay

We arrived in the small, beautiful town of Denham, Shark Bay, a few days ago. We're on Malgana, Nhanda and Yingkarta country.

After 63 consecutive days of near perfect weather, we awoke this morning to fierce winds and the dreaded sound of rain on the roof. There was a bit of frantic activity closing all the windows, shoving loose items into the car, and bringing in the awning before the wind took it to Mauritius. Then we retreated inside for coffee and toast and contemplated how best to spend the day.

A couple of locals had mentioned that the Shark Bay Ocean Park Aquarium welcomes canines in its cafe and on tours. This is a rare thing and the Labs are used to hanging out in the car or hitched up to a tree while I enjoy places like this. So I decided to give them a treat and take them into the Aquarium with me. It didn't take long before I was seriously questioning my judgement, wrestling one of the Labs who desperately wanted a piece of the action during the shark feeding demonstration. And before you ask, there are no prizes for guessing which of the Labs thought taking the food out of the mouth of a tiger shark would be a fun thing to do.

I missed a fair bit of the commentary while dealing with the numbskull Lab, but caught enough to learn that the shark pool contained a few different species of sharks commonly found in Shark Bay, including Tiger sharks and the very pretty Lemon Tipped sharks. Smaller pools contained Nervous sharks (the best kind) and a variety of stingrays, groupers, squid, reef fish and snapper. Most of the sharks in the pool had been rescued after being injured through recreational fishing. There's about 28 species of sharks in Shark Bay and while it's safe to swim in the area, we won't be tempted.

I think the Labs enjoyed tagging along with me. It's just as well becaus

We're here for the rest of the week and looking forward to exploring more of the Shark Bay Marine Park, including Monkey Mia, when the weather improves a bit. We hope you enjoy the photos.