A very early start this morning sees us up well before dawn and on our way to Monkey Mia about 50 km from our overnight camp at Eagles Bluff for the feeding of the wild dolphins. The dolphins have been coming to Monkey Mia every morning for their breakfast since the early sixties. They come right up to the beach to be fed and this morning there are a pod of 11 – three generations of three family groups the oldest being around 35 and the youngest five years old. Now the whole spectacle is commercialised, contained and controlled by the rangers, unlike the days when people could come here for free and swim with the dolphins unfettered by rules and regulations. All of which are, of course, in the interests of humans (who apparently have an uncanny knack of getting bitten when they put their fingers in dolphins mouths) and dolphins who were being harassed and fed the wrong diet and as a consequence weren’t looking after their young or foraging for themselves. Nowadays, it costs $6 to enter the small resort area known as Monkey Mia and there is well-defined and regulated feeding ritual. The dolphins arrival is heralded by two pelicans that know the drill and want a bit of the action. At 7.30 am on cue the first of the dolphins arrive, soon to be followed by several more. Over the next half-an-hour the ranger takes us through his patter about the history of Monkey Mia and some interesting facts about dolphins all the while the dolphins wait patiently, swimming up and down the shallows only a few feet from the expectant crowd. At eight o’clock about half-a-dozen volunteers appear with buckets of fish, the small crowd step back out of the water and the feeding begins. (In the meantime the pelicans being distracted by another volunteer who craftily has a decoy yellow bucket of fish at the back of the beach; the pelicans wait patiently for their feed unaware of this subtle deceit) Selected members of the crowd are invited to hand feed the dolphins including Andy. The feeding of the last fish is synchronised to prevent the oldest dolphin from stealing from the others. The buckets are filled with water and emptied into the sea; this signals to the dolphins tat the feed is over and immediately they head back out to sea. Feeding time is over. Until the dolphins decide to come back, which they do about 10 minutes later and the whole ritual begins again. The dolphins are fed up to three times a day as long as they come back before midday and the amount of fish they are given is strictly controlled. .An experience definitely worth making the 100 km detour to Shark Bay and much better than dolphin-watching from a boat.
We spend the rest of the day at Monkey Mia walking along the beach, sun bathing and fishing. The weather is as good as a hot English summer’s day and this is a very pleasant place to spend it doing nothing much.