Australia Diving

Great White Sharks in Australia article and Neville Coleman Interview

Just published is my Asian Diver magazine article about cage diving with great white sharks with Rodney Fox in South Australia, and also my interview with Neville Coleman in Scuba Diver AustralAsia magazine. Coleman is one of Australia’s most distinguished marine biologists, completely self-taught, who pushed forward knowledge of Australian marine life massively by diving the entire coast of Australia on a self-financed and often perilous expedition that took several years. Last year Coleman was inducted into the Scuba Diving Hall Of Fame, along with Rodney Fox, who is an Australian legend for surviving a great white shark attack and going on to pioneer great white conservation.

You can read my complete interview with Rodney Fox and also check out some of my great white shark videos as well as my personal favourite, Great White Shark gives me the evil eye.

Great White Shark Survivor And Protector – The Complete Rodney Fox Interview

Rodney Fox has helped shape our understanding of great white sharks for over 40 years and still regularly voyages off the South Australian coast to cage dive with these incredible creatures. Here’s the full version of the Rodney Fox interview I did for Scuba Diver AustralAsia magazine a few months ago.

Rodney Fox is something of a legend in Australia – the man who survived a near fatal great white shark attack and subsequently dedicated his life to understanding and protecting these amazing creatures. Taken by a shark off the coast of South Australia in 1963 when he was champion abalone diver, Rodney suffered severe injuries that required over 400 stitches from a medical team frantically working to save his life. Miraculously Rodney not only made a full recovery, but he also dedicated his life to finding out more about great white sharks.

Over the last 40 years Rodney has led hundreds of expeditions to see the great whites around the Neptune Islands along with his son Andrew, bringing divers face to face with these fearsome sharks during cage dives. He also worked on the Spielberg’s blockbuster Jaws and the seminal great white documentary Blue Water White Death, directed by Peter Gimbell. It’s not just great white sharks that Rodney has been interested in though – he was also instrumental in the discovery of the whale sharks at Ningaloo Reef in Western Australia in the early 1990s.

Rodney is currently sifting through his enormous archive of great white shark material with plans to produce a book about his four decades of shark watching: “I have a lot of notes, memories and a huge collection of slide transparencies and pictures to go through”. It promises to be a unique insight into just how much things have changed for the sharks in during the last half century. Here he shares his thoughts on his life’s work watching and trying to protect the great white sharks of South Australia.

It’s been 43 years since you were attacked by the great white shark that set you off on a remarkable journey to understand these fearsome creatures. What’s the single most important thing you’ve learned about them and ourselves in that time?

Whilst recovering from my shark attack I was amazed at the reactions of so many people to sharks and the emotion shown while talking about sharks, was of fears, terror and frustration at not understanding. A bit like they would speak of the devil, hell and death. I knew nothing about sharks and could find nothing in libraries to educate myself. Being frightened of another attack, and knowing that it was a miracle that I had survived. I felt apprehensive about going through it again, without some knowledge, of species, habitat and behaviour. I planned to find out more, to see if I could go diving safely and work out if the fear generated in people’s minds was real. The single most important thing I have learnt is that we need sharks in our oceans. They are the keystone predators in the ocean food pyramid.

How is the Fox Shark Research Foundation progressing?

The Fox Shark Research Foundation was founded to further promote shark conservation issues to the public, and educate people that sharks are not all bad, and that we all have to learn to live with them as they have a place in nature. We must not kill them just because we fear them. We’ve had great interest in our Adopt-a-Shark programme, with hundreds of adopters.

The funds generated from this program have already provided help for studies on Great White Sharks, including three Satellite tags, which have shown incredible journeys that these Great whites have taken.

What’s your take on the huge demand for shark’s fin as a delicacy in Asia?

I think there is certainly a quite real ecological disaster looming ahead if shark finning continues. I can only quote the nearly unbelievable reported figures of up to one hundred million sharks killed per year mainly for their fins. Compared with other fish, their low birth rate and late sexual maturity simply does not allow the slow breeding sharks to sustain this level of fishing pressure.

Great whites are only caught accidentally here in South Australia now, often getting tangled in long-lines or nets set for edible sharks and other commercial fish species.

On our expeditions we often see Great whites that have escaped and at least temporarily survived encounters with commercial fishermen with damaged fins from fishing the gear, and ropes still hanging off them.

Rodney Fox and his son Andrew Fox

On the Rodney Fox expeditions, you take divers out to meet the sharks themselves. What is your perspective on sharks associating humans with food?

Over the last 40 years that I have been cage diving with great whites , we have tried dozens of places along the Australian Southern Coast and identified several “hot spots”, where great whites visit regularly to feed.

These areas are all breeding areas for sea lions like the Neptune Islands where we have permits to chum and cage dive. This area has thousands of breeding New Zealand fur seals so our chum only can try to encourage the attention of the sharks away from the seals so to come closer to our vessel. We anchor in a calm bay close to shore, that is right next to this “sharks restaurant” and trickle a mixture of minced tuna and salt water over the side. The tidal movement takes the mixture away, creating an “odour” trail back to us.

When great whites first come to the islands first looking for sea lions, they are attracted to our boat by our chum trail, as the scent of tuna is also very appealing to them at a relatively short distance. To keep them in visual range, we need to lure them in closer with a piece of fish on a rope with a balloon or float suspending it near the surface. We try not to let the sharks eat the baits. By pulling the baits away from the sharks, and with relatively few baits taken per day, the sharks don’t get enough reward for effort to start relying on us for food.

From long term studies with acoustic tags and listening stations, we have found that sharks visit the Neptune islands just as often and even slightly more often when we are not there than when we are. After a brief encounter, some sharks often go away and never get seen again. Some sharks swimming through the area are only seen passing by the cage on our submersible bottom dives and not at the surface at all.

Cage diving with the great white shark

How do your guests usually react when they come face to face with a great white shark with only a cage between them?

Underwater our guests have told us that they breathe much faster, their hearts thump heavier in their chests, and the hair stands up on the back of their necks. It is quite natural to let go of the cage with your hands and step backwards in this self-preservation mode.

When back on the surface, when the divers can finally take out their regulators, there are squeals, yells, laughter and excitement and even the me more sedate and quiet guests have the most genuine smile on their faces that’s hard to wipe off and stays put for quite a while.

What sort of safety precautions do you put in place to protect your divers besides the cage?

Pre dive lectures and video shows by our dive masters try and give divers a good idea of what to expect, and with safety warnings, like to keep your hands inside the cage. Of course nothing we can say can actually describe the real feeling of seeing such a magnificent animal underwater, and most people are more than happy to stay safe, and just enjoy the experience! In over 40 years of diving we have not had any shark injuries to our divers other than an addiction to see more and more!

You were also involved in the discovery of whale sharks off Ningaloo Reef in Exmouth in Western Australia – how did that come about?

I proposed a story to National Geographic on the North West Coast of Australia called “The Last Frontier” For three months with David Doubilet as the underwater cameraman and with me as expedition leader/writer, we travelled and dived in this huge wonderful area from Shark Bay right up to Wyndham. There were stories of giant Whale Sharks being seen by travellers and documented by researchers off Ningaloo Reef. I took a calculated guess and David and I hired an aeroplane to look for them. That year, just after the coral had spawned we were delighted to see six sharks on the first two-hour trip. I organised radio so that the plane pilot could talk to and direct our charter boat captain George King, right in front of the travelling sharks where David and I would jump in and wait until they swam by us. In those early days we often used SCUBA and without any regulations back then occasionally used underwater scooters and had other freedoms that we are not allowed now. From 1990 I organised expeditions for many other tourist groups and films including an IMAX production, and chalked up over 500 dives with Whale Sharks in those first couple of seasons. That was a really great adventure!

You have a busy schedule of running great white expeditions with your son Andrew, running the Rodney Fox Shark Foundation and consulting on shark filming too. Which of these three occupies most of your time? Is there one you have particular enthusiasm for at the moment?

These days, I spend up to 100 days per year at sea with my son Andrew, on Great White Shark Expeditions. While on shore, my wife Kay and I spend time at my Shark Experience Museum at Glenelg, giving talks and improving our exhibits, and also working on the Fox Shark Research Foundation.

As Andrew and his wife Silvy and our daughter Lenore are managing the Expeditions, Museum and Foundations it is all a family affair. On our Great White Shark Expeditions, seeing the great whites around the cages and swimming round the boat, gives me enthusiasm that doesn’t fade, especially when our guest expedition members get out of the cages, excited and with great, incredible smiles on their faces, saying things like “That’s the best thing I have EVER done!” and “The sharks are so beautiful!”

Whale Sharks: The Giants Of Ningaloo Reef

“Whale Sharks: The Giants Of Ningaloo Reef” is a unique book by Geoff Taylor that provides an amazing photographic and text document about the whale sharks of Western Australia

This is, in every sense, a magnificent book – a hefty, oversized hardback chock full of spectacular photographs as befits its subject matter, the biggest fish in the world: the whale shark. Weighing in at several tons and measuring up to a staggering 12 metres in length, whale sharks remain an enigma to even the most expert marine scientists. Little is known about them – where they come from, where they go, how they breed – or even how many of them are still in the oceans. What is known about them is due in no small part to the book’s author Geoff Taylor, an English doctor who emigrated to Western Australia in the 1970s. Dr Taylor heard about the mysterious creatures passing by Ningaloo Reef, a vast coral reef system half way up the West Coast, over a thousand miles away from Western Australia’s capital city Perth, itself officially the most remote capital city in the world. Taylor’s fascination for finding out more about the whale sharks led him to live in Exmouth, a tiny coastal town perched next to Ningaloo surrounded by thousands of desolate square miles of the outback.

Being so close to Ningaloo and able to observe its monthly changes, Taylor realised that the whale sharks’ arrival at the reef seemed to correspond with the coral’s annual spawning – the reef’s reproductive frenzy which leaves the water thick with secreted eggs and sperm. Despite their fearsome size, whale sharks eat only plankton, hoovering in huge quantities of water through toothless mouths the size of a sofa to feed – for them, the spawning is a gastronomic delight which draws them back year after year. This realisation is straightforward enough to recount, but less than twenty years ago it was still a completely unheard of theory – and sighting whale sharks around Exmouth’s coast was still a definitively rare event.

Once the connection was made between the coral spawning and the whale sharks’ migration, word quickly spread of whale shark sightings and the beginning of the 1990s saw a flurry of film makers for the likes of National Geographic heading for Western Australia to capture footage of these amazing creatures. Taylor himself was caught up in that first wave of documenting the whale sharks and his book is a visual testament to his success in doing so. Besides capturing spectacular photos and video footage, a program of tagging the sharks was also set in place to try and learn more about them.

That the text in “Whale Sharks” is as good as the truly double-take inducing photographs gives me particular pleasure. Too often a book that has great images is lessened by will-this-do text slung in around it. What’s often forgotten is that whilst images capture the attention, words are what stimulate the imagination – they provide the context and the passion of how these photos came to exist in the first place and, in recounting just how difficult it was to take photos of the whale shark in its natural habitat, provide a unique insight into man’s discovery, interaction and, some would argue, exploitation of these creatures.

Go to Exmouth now, 15 years on, and you’ll find a burgeoning whale shark industry – spotter planes go out every morning to locate the whale sharks and radio their position to boats full of eager snorkellers. So popular has swimming with whale sharks become that the Australian authorities have imposed thoughtful and strictly enforced limits on human encounters with them: no more than 8 people in the water at a time, no touching and no scuba diving around them. Even so, there are concerns about the whale sharks and the state of aquatic life in general around Exmouth.Taylor’s book indicates there has been a marked decline in the fish stocks around Ningaloo Reef in the last 20 years and he is distinctly ambivalent about the consequences of the publicity he helped bring to bear on the whale sharks. The sheer popularity of encounters with them seems to be damaging the marine environment and, of course, no one is quite sure what it is doing to the sharks. There is a lot of money being made around the whale sharks, but selling the message of looking after them and their habitat is in danger of being neglected. Taylor’s book captures the beauty of these unique creatures and also sounds a distinct warning about their future, all the more effective and convincing for being phrased with the calm, rational logic of a doctor.

While no longer in print, Whale Sharks is currently available second hand on Amazon.co.uk Amazon.com

The Whale Sharks Of Ningaloo Reef, Western Australia

Whale sharks appear every year at Ningaloo Reef in Western Australia, one of the most pristine and important coral reef systems in the world

How can you not want to go somewhere called Ningaloo Reef?

I first heard about this irresistably named place reading my Lonely Planet Australia in rainy England while I was preparing to go backpacking around Oz in 2003. Just saying the word brought a smile to my face. It was also the first time I’d heard about whale sharks, the biggest fish in the world, gentle giants who feed on krill and come to Ningaloo Reef every year between April and June to feed on the coral spawning there. When I read about the whale sharks, I just knew I had to go to Ningaloo.

Easier said than done. Ningaloo Reef is located in one of the most remote places in Australia – half way up the Western Australian coast, over a 1000 miles away from Perth, itself the most remote capital city in the world. (It’s the capital of the state, not the country). Getting to Perth is a five hour plane trip just from Sydney, and then getting to Exmouth, the tiny town nearest to Ningaloo, is another hour or so in a small plane or a three day bus trip up the coast, stopping off at other places of interest along the way. (There’s a great company called Easy Riders who run these buses who I’d thoroughly recommend). Whichever way you cut it, you’re going to spending considerable effort to get there.

Exmouth Town
Once you do arrive in Exmouth, it can be quite a system shock. It’s the archetypal one-horse town. There’s two pubs, both owned by the same guy, and their opening days alternate. There’s a supermarket and couple of shops. There’s a burger van on some nights who do cracking burgers. There’s a few hotels. And that’s about it. There were plans to build a huge marina project but the locals got it stopped, concerned about the environmental impact. I remember overhearing a classic conversation between a tourist and a resident:

“So where’s the town centre?”

“You’re standing in it, mate”.

True story.

Exmouth is perched on the edge of the vast West Australian desert, looking out into the Gulf Of Exmouth. The sky is perpetually vast and blue, the sun baking the red brown earth below which stretches out in an unbroken flat plain to meet it at the horizon. The town itself has a temporary feel, like everything has been cobbled together and could be taken down and removed overnight – maybe a legacy of most of Exmouth being flattened by a typhoon a few years ago. If you want to live out the cliche of feeling very small in the vastness of the desert, this is the place to do it. The desert and the sky are so huge they make not only you but the town around you feel like an imposition. As Nick Cave recently said in an interview, “We kind of cling to the edges of the country and build our houses facing out to the sea. We don’t want to know about that huge, vast, mysterious, terrifying expanse that is the middle of Australia.”

Diving on Ningaloo Reef
Underwater, the barreness of the desert gives away to an overwhelming panoply of marine life. The waters around Ningaloo Reef are gin clear, with 20 metre visibility letting you drop in and see swathes of pristine coral reef stretching away beneath you. Reef sharks lazily hang around on the sandy bottom, turtles slowly munch coral, octopus pop in and out of their hidey-holes, great clouds of fish flit around out in the blue… it’s truly breathtaking. The dives are all fairly shallow as well, no more than 18 metres and there’s little current – in short, there’s little to distract you from looking at the amazing life on the reef. It’s easy to get in and out to the dive sites too – generally it’s less than 20 minutes in a small rib to get out to them from the shore.

Exmouth Navy Pier dive
Besides the reefs themselves, there’s also the fabled Exmouth Navy Pier dive, rated as one of the best dives in Australia and maybe the world. There’s certainly a lot of life amongst the girders of the Navy Pier, but on the two dives I did there, it was pretty murky viz and the amount of other dives in the water made me feel a bit claustrophobic. You may see more species per cubic inch here, but I much prefer the wide open space of the reef itself. The Pier dive is one of those dives you simply have to do if you come to Exmouth because you hear so much about it – everyone else seemed to find a lot more exciting than me. For my money, I much preferred my dive under Busselton Jetty, further down the Western Australian coast.

Ningaloo Reef is not as big as the Great Barrier Reef over on the east coast of Australia – but at 280 kilometres long, Ningaloo is one of the largest and most significant coral eco systems in the world. It’s also still one of the most pristine coral reefs in the world, which is why it still attracts the star attraction of Ningaloo – the whale sharks.

Whale Sharks at Ningaloo Reef
There are only a couple of dive operations in Exmouth, but they both operate whale shark expeditions in the same way. They use spotter planes to find the whale sharks as they come in to the reef and then send the diveboat after them. They are so confident they can find the sharks that they will take you on a second trip for free if they don’t find one the first time. Australia has a strict policy about “interacting” with whale sharks – no more than 8 people in the water at a time with whale shark, no touching, keep out of its way…and no scuba diving either. You’re only allowed to snorkel with whale sharks on these expeditions.

Of course, if you are scuba diving on the reef and a whale shark turns up while you’re there, then no one can do anything about that. But scuba diving is not allowed with these spotting expeditions, and it’s a good rule in my book. I can imagine the chaos of 8 divers jumping in to go see the whale shark – not only would the poor thing be frightened to death by being crowded, divers themselves could get a bit carried away and not watch their depth and air.

Besides, snorkelling is quite enough with whale sharks. When I went out on an expedition, we saw two sharks – the divemaster goes in first and everyone follows once she’s positioned herself so the group doesn’t slam into the whale shark itself. What happens next is just spectacular. Dip your head under the water with the mask and snorkel, realise the viz is easily 30 metres, look around…and there it is, the biggest fish in the world, moving slowly and with consumate grace through the water with a whole entourage of cleaner fish…straight towards you. It really is like watching a Star Destroyer move through the blue – the sense of space and the sheer size of this creature is mesmerising. As it gets closer, you realise that a) it’s actually moving quite fast and b) it’s really bloody big. Six metres long easily. Six metres! Three times my height!

The whale shark continued to unconcernedly come straight at us – they’re renown for being curious about other creatures in the water, but despite their size, they are easily scared off. Our group frantically finned backwards so the shark could pass between two clusters of us – it passed straight through us, its huge, powerful tail less than a metre away from me. If I’d wanted to, I could have reach out and touched it. The group tentatively paddled with the whale shark as it moved along the surface for a few minutes, getting faster and leaving most of us straggling behind. Then it was gone. I could see it disappearing into the depths when I put my mask back into the water. The whole encounter for which I’d travelled half way around the world lasted no more than 10 minutes. And I felt absolutely elated.

Snorkelling back to the boat which was a couple hundred yards away, I suddenly realised we weren’t alone in the water. Looking down, there were two large grey shapes about 20 metres below us. It turned out they were minke whales, gliding together seemingly without being bothered by us splashing around above. At the time, I didn’t know they were minke whales, so my first thought was not “I am privileged once again to witness these amazing creatures in their natural habitat”, but more “What the fuck is that?” I’d been told tales by the divemasters the night before that every so often the spotter plane gets it wrong and the big shape in the water below to which the expedition boat is directed turns out to not be a whale shark but actually the far more aggressive tiger shark. Hence why the DMs jump in first to check before the customers get in. Which seems wholly reasonable to me.

Whale Sharks In Danger?
Joking aside, my trip to Ningaloo really caught my imagination. I’ve subsequently become fascinated by whale sharks and read up quite a lot about them as well as enjoying a couple more magical encounters with them in Thailand. (See my posts about Geoff Taylor’s amazing book Whale Sharks: The Giants Of Ningaloo Reef; The Best Places To See Whale Sharks in Thailand; and my article about diving off Koh Lanta, where I saw a whale shark and five manta rays in one dive).

Going to Exmouth also opened my eyes to the burgeoning ecological and pollution problems that have to be constantly battled to try and keep the oceans in a decent state. While I was in the town there was a big protest movement, which was ultimately successful, to stop the development of a marina in the town, because Exmouth and the reef just couldn’t cope with such an influx of visitors. I think these issues are always complex – but it’s important to get involved and try and understand them and to speak up about the damage being done to the oceans – not in a preachy way, but simply to let people know, because it still remains largely out of sight and so out of mind.

There’s a lot of concern about the popularitty of the whale shark expeditions too, and whether it’s actually good for the sharks themselves. I think it’s important to find a way to manage it so that people still get the chance to see the whale sharks in the natural habitat without causing the sharks distress – and also to use a way to fire more people’s imaginations and suggest concrete ways of how they can help and how all of our lives, whether we can see it or not, have a huge impact on the amazing world around us. The whale sharks are a real symbol of that, a creature that is harmless to humans but inspires awe, but is endangered due to overfishing and coral reef destruction. I for one want the annual arrival of the whale sharks at Ningaloo Reef to remain as the highlight of Exmouth’s yearly calendar for many years to come.

Busselton Jetty, West Australia

Busselton is one of South Western Australia’s hidden scuba diving gems thanks to its famous jetty

The Great Barrier Reef might be Australia’s most famous scuba diving destination, but there are scores of other equally amazing places to go underwater dotted round this brown continent’s coastline.

Busselton, on the south west coast of Australia, is one such example. Only a couple of hours drive from Perth, Busselton is one of the top tourist towns in the south west. The town is famed for the Busselton Jetty, which at nearly two kilometres long, is the longest timber jetty in the Southern Hemisphere. It’s so long a train runs along it to take tourists back and forth. But I wasn’t that interested in what was on top of Busselton’s jetty, more what lay beneath it. Because the jetty has been in place in one form or another for nearly 140 years, it has developed its own unique marine ecosystem. In other words – there’s lots of fish. So spectacular is the aquatic life beneath the jetty that an underwater observatory has recently been opened so those who don’t want to get wet can still see what lies beneath the pylons and the planks.

A quick phonecall a few days before had secured me a place on one of the diveboats that run regularly out of Busselton. As well as the jetty, Busselton has several other dive sites, the most prominent of which is the HMAS Swan, an Australian frigate which was deliberately sunk to create an artificial reef. I signed up for two dives on the Swan and one on the jetty and, to be honest, I was more excited about diving on the frigate. The jetty sounded like it was just going to a series of chances to bang my head against pylons…

The two dives on HMAS Swan were suitably impressive – the water was pretty clear and wasn’t too cold. After descending down the anchorline, we followed our guide through the blue until we saw the huge grey shape of the Swan looming in front of us. It had landed on the seafloor upright, and it looked distinctly eerie sitting at the bottom of the ocean. We followed our guide over the bow, where we could fin out over the top of the deck and look straight down the ship’s side, giving that fantastic feeling of flying. Then we penetrated the wreck (stop laughing at the back), swimming through the top deck and into the bridge, where the captain’s seat still remained intact.

It wasn’t until I hit the water again once the boat was moored just off the jetty that I realized why it has such a reputation. It was like descending into a technicolour forest. All the jetty’s vertical pylons were covered in long, finger like corals in bright reds, oranges, purples and whites which swayed with the gentle current – thousands of them running from the top to the bottom of each pylon. Moving amongst them felt completely surreal and absolutely amazing. Hanging around between the pylons were huge shoals of fish, seemingly unphased by our presence, happy to let us swim by and follow us en masse with one beady eye. I could pretend that I managed to identify all the different species that were down there, but to be honest I was too busy trying to stop my mouth falling open and losing my regulator. Because the dive is so shallow – 10 metres maximum depth – it means you can spend ages down there. When my guide finally signaled that we should surface, I thought we’d only been down for 10 minutes, so entranced was I by the colours of the coral and the fish. Turns out we were down there for 50! Back on terra firma with a coldie firmly in hand, my dive buddies and I could only agree that it had been a truly spectacular day of diving – and even better, we’d had both dive sites to ourselves. We felt suitably smug at having discovered one of WA’s many hidden diving delights.

Great White Sharks in Australia article and Neville Coleman Interview

Great White Shark Survivor And Protector – The Complete Rodney Fox Interview

Whale Sharks: The Giants Of Ningaloo Reef

The Whale Sharks Of Ningaloo Reef, Western Australia

Busselton Jetty, West Australia

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