Seasons and runs, about 15 Mar to 12 Jul 2027
Whale shark season at Ningaloo
From about March to July, whale sharks gather off Ningaloo Reef in Western Australia to feed after the coral spawning.
Each year from about March to July, whale sharks gather along Ningaloo Reef, a fringing reef on the coast of Western Australia that is a World Heritage Site. They come to feed on the plankton that blooms after the mass spawning of the corals. Most of the sharks seen are young males, 4 to 12 metres long. Licensed boats from Exmouth and Coral Bay take swimmers out under strict rules on distance and numbers, and the photographs they take are used to identify individual sharks by their spots.
Fish tied to Whale shark season at Ningaloo
Still to be written: Reef manta ray.
Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Whale shark: User:Zac Wolf (original), en:User:Stefan (cropping), CC BY-SA 2.5, source