Exploring Australia s wild ningaloo reef swim with whale sharks

If you love wilderness, you have to love Australia. I mean, take a look at it. It's vast. It's a beautiful continent. I'm going to venture into the heart of some of the wildest places on Earth. Off the beaten track... Ooh, what was that? Oh, a big one. ..across the remote outback... ..into the big blue ocean... ..and high over the mountains. Well, it should be a great place to look for eagles. EAGLE SQUAWKS With my team, I'm going to discover the incredible life that just thrives here. In all its beauty, variety... I just saw one. ..and drama. As I travel from the heat of the day... Keep moving now, guys. Keep moving back. ..to the cool of the night... This is one of the most incredible sights in nature. ..across the epic landscapes of the Australian wilderness. Australia has some of the world's most protected marine areas, and this time, I'll be diving deep into those wilderness waters. Ningaloo sits between Western Australia's rocky desert and the Indian Ocean. Ningaloo is one of the world's most ancient coastlines, and the best way to see it is actually from the air. HE LAUGHS This may look like a bathtub under a kite, but guess what? It feels like one too. I could really get into this way of flying. It's brilliant. I feel like an osprey. I have to say, a microlight is a great way to take a look at the journey I'm about to make. So, below me is Mandu Mandu Gorge. That's where I'm going to start my journey on foot. I'm going to follow the gorge down to the ocean and dive out to the coral reef beyond. That's some view. That's awesome. Amazing. That was incredible. Over the next two days, I'm going to work my way from the rocky desert out into the Indian Ocean. To understand this prehistoric landscape, I must first go back in time and travel along a gorge which is millions of years old. I'm walking on what used to be the bed of an ancient sea. This is Mandu Mandu Gorge, and it's pretty arid and hot. In fact, if there wasn't a nice cooling breeze in my face, it would be quite oppressive. But what a beautiful place it is. If you're a diver, you may recognise when you look at these cliff faces that this is an ancient reef. Once, a very, very long time ago, this was a reef. 20 million years ago, tectonic plates collided, forcing the seabed up above the water, creating these limestone cliffs. Well, I can now see my journey opening up ahead of me. You can see the waves breaking there. That's Ningaloo Reef. My plan is to go down to Ningaloo Reef and then work my way up along it, exploring the marine wildlife to be seen there, before crossing over the drop-off into the open ocean. And that will be absolutely full of wildlife. Travelling across this ancient land is like exploring a living museum. Everywhere I look, I'm seeing fossils. This, perhaps, is one of the more impressive fossils that can be found in this area. This is a shark's tooth, dated at about 1.6 million years old. It's from a shark called Megalodon that doesn't exist today. Megalodons were bigger than double-decker buses. And you can still feel, on the edge of the tooth, sharp serrations. It's amazing. It's mind-blowing to think that gigantic sharks once swam here when all the land was underwater. But what's really exciting is that relatives of that ancient shark are still alive today in the very ocean I'm heading towards. Down here, the strata of rock is absolutely one mass of sea life. Everywhere I look, I'm seeing fossils. I'm tripping over them, quite literally, like these lovely brain corals here. There are shells and all sorts of things. Some sort of snail shell there. If you take a couple of minutes, it's astonishing what you see. And at this level in the reef, these sea creatures would have lived 20 million years ago. It's staggering. I can feel the breeze of the ocean, but it's the middle of the day and we're heading towards temperatures of 40 degrees. If you want to spot wildlife, you can use this time of day to your advantage. Go out in the middle part of the day, when the sun is at its hottest, and look into the shadows of the bushes, because wallabies, gyros, wallaroos, kangaroos, they all like to find shade in the middle part of the day. Quite frankly, that's where I ought to be right now. If you look there, you can see a couple of gyros sat in the shade of that bush. That's exactly what I'm talking about. Unlike their kangaroo cousins, gyros prefer rocky landscapes to open plains. And they're not just dependent on waterholes to drink. They can find underground water by digging wells in the creek beds. They can dig holes up to a metre deep. Now, that's a great sight. Ahead of me is the Indian Ocean. This is lovely. This is Ningaloo Reef, and it's quite unusual, because this reef is close to the land. It's really inshore. They call that a fringe reef, and that's quite unusual. You can see the edge of the reef is where the waves are breaking over there. And, you know, it's been a long, hard, hot day walking in the desert. I cannot wait to get in that water. I'm joined by Marcus Lorenz, a local marine expert and underwater cameraman. He has been exploring these waters for 15 years, so if anyone can show me around, he can. At 260 kilometres long, Ningaloo is the largest fringing coral reef in the world. It can even be seen from space. As we snorkel, a curious green sea turtle comes to see us. It's wonderful to get so close. Turtles seem to move at a different pace of life to us. Sea turtles spend most of their lives in the ocean. They don't have gills like fish, so can't breathe underwater, but they can hold their breath for several hours at a time. As the turtle leaves us, Marcus and I head back to shore. Brilliant, Marcus. Thank you. That was great. That was a calm dive, wasn't it? It was good. But what a tantalising glimpse of Ningaloo Reef. Awesome. But I want to dive deeper in search of a giant of the ocean. And now it's time to head further out to Ningaloo Reef. To explore the far side of the reef, I need a bigger boat. So I'm teaming up with skipper Matt Oakley and his crew on board their catamaran, my base for the next 24 hours. Hello. Welcome aboard. Nice to meet you, Matt. Ningaloo Reef reaches depths of up to 35 metres, so we're going to scuba dive this time. As we make our diver safety checks, there's a real sense of anticipation and excitement. We might come up with some very creative hand signals down there. We make them up as we go along. Every diving location in the world has its own special collection. This is a shark. Yeah, yeah. This is a turtle. If it's just something awesome, then this is awesome. As awesome as it? Awesome. Got that? Awesome. Double awesome. Final OK, guys. Let's do this. Good. With the dive signs agreed, we get going. Daisy is joining us as our dive buddy. So my marine cameraman, Marcus, and I are safe to focus on the wildlife. The colourful corals of Ningaloo Reef are home to over 500 species of tropical fish, like these narrow-lined puffers and butterflyfish. Out of the corner of my eye, I spot movement on the sea floor. It's a stingray. Stingrays can be tricky to find because they spend most of their time buried in the sand, hiding from predatory sharks and larger rays. We know that stingrays have been swimming in our oceans for 150 million years. But their fossils are difficult to find because their bodies are made up of soft cartilage and not bones. The only evidence they leave behind are their teeth. Further along the reef, I spot a long tail. It's a sleeping ball stingray. If you look closely, you can see the impressive barb on its tail that carries a deadly venom. But it will only use this in self-defence. Better to leave him in peace. That was awesome. Absolutely brilliant dive. Thank you very much. Thanks, Daisy. It's a beautiful dive site. The coral's fantastic. You've got these little coral gardens on top with little fish in them and the really big ray. I don't know whether, Marcus, did you catch the first one? I tried. When it took off, it left this big cloud of sand. I was hoping I would see it behind the cloud, but it was gone. You were filming something else and I saw it. And just as I saw it, it decided to come out of hiding in the sand. And it was. It was the size of this, wasn't it? Big, massive one. We found a second one sleeping under the ledge. That was amazing. And we left it sleeping. Yeah, we didn't want to disturb it. That's really good. Quite an impressive barb on it. Did you see that? I did. That was quite impressive. Yeah, I did. What a great dive that was. And as the day ends, we all settle in for the night. I think this is my favourite time of day on a dive boat. It's awesome. The sun has just gone down. There's a relaxed calm now over the whole vessel. Today's work is done. It's good. As the sun sets, my mind is full of the things I've seen. But tomorrow, there's the chance of finding a rare giant of the ocean. Yesterday was fantastic. To see all that marine life on the reef, brilliant. But this morning, there's a sense of anticipation in the air. None of us can wait for the engines to start and for the anchor to be weighed so that we can set out beyond the reef in search of the Earth's largest fish, the whale shark. Whale sharks are critically endangered. To see them is a huge privilege. So to help me find one, we're being joined by Dr Brad Norman, a whale shark warrior. Brad and his team have spent many years studying whale sharks and know all the best spots to find them. Welcome aboard. I think we'll get underway. Brad has collected data on over 8,000 whale sharks around the world and on one shark in particular. So if we take Timmy as our example, you've been monitoring him for some years. What's that telling you about his relationship to this place, Ningaloo Reef? Well, Timmy is a smallish whale shark. I mean, they can get to 20 metres or so, but he's about 6.5 metres. So that's immature. And it's possible that Ningaloo Reef provides a lot of food, a great area for productivity, and it's an area that's close to the coastline where they're protected. But, yeah, Ningaloo's a bit of an area for teenagers to hang out. Brad can identify individual whale sharks using technology which is out of this world. This system maps the spots on the skin of a whale shark and then runs that scan against the thousands of other patterns or shark fingerprints we have in the library. And how does that work? What happens is, two of my colleagues, the brains of Sides of Planets, a NASA astrophysicist and a software engineer... NASA astrophysicist. We came together and basically it's the way the system runs, it's an adaptation of an algorithm that NASA uses to map stars in the night sky. If it's the same shark, it'll come up as a match. If there's no match, then it's a new shark that hasn't been seen before. And that's quite exciting because we're getting a lot of new ones coming through. With Brad's help, I'm eager to get into the water and see one of these mysterious creatures for myself. And I'm in luck. Our spotter plane overhead has located a whale shark. Yeah, roger, mate. OK, so just confirming there's a whale shark on the surface, 400 metres... It directs us towards the site. Yeah, Bridget. The crew signals that they've got a visual on the whale shark. Whale sharks are harmless to humans, but we position ourselves carefully so as not to distress it. And we wait for it to come to us. This is what we've all been waiting for. This juvenile lets me swim right alongside it. He's accompanied by some hitchhikers. But it's a mutual arrangement. These sucker fish help keep the shark's skin clean and in return, get fed. His skin is tougher than that of any other animal in the world. It's covered in hard, bristle-like teeth that overlap, creating a literal suit of armour. Bizarrely, the largest fish in the ocean relies for food on the tiniest creatures and plants that we call plankton. To do this, they have to sieve through 6,000 litres of seawater every hour. These gentle giants have been swimming in our oceans for 60 million years. This is one of the greatest things I have ever experienced. Amazing. Words fail me to be honest with you. Wow. Beautiful shark. That was amazing. How big was that shark? I reckon it was about six, six and a half metres. It was sort of a good size. He's full of superlatives, isn't he? He's just mind-blowing. He was a little bit hesitant, staying deep at start, but then you got him out. He came out. Every time I took my eye off of him, he was coming towards me. That was amazing. My time on Ningaloo Reef is over all too quickly. I really enjoyed exploring that ancient onshore reef, 20 million years old. And it's made me think about sharks. Sharks as a life form evolved 200 million years before the dinosaurs, so they've been around longer than most living life forms today. To then be able to go offshore, beyond the reef, and to swim alongside those beautiful, harmless whale sharks, well, that's something I'll never forget as long as I live, and testimony to what a pristine coastline this remains today.