Monkey Mia is home to the famous wild Bottlenose Dolphins that swim right up to shore every morning for a free bite to eat. And no, there aren’t any monkeys. There’s legend of a monkey jumping off a sailors boat and making it to shore, and “Mia” is the Indigenous word for “home”. They should really think about changing the name to “Dolphin Mia”, that’s much less misleading. Anyways, back to the dolphins…
Every morning the dolphins show up around 7:00 am for a free meal. As cool as this sight is, it’s obviously not natural to teach these intelligent animals such bad habits. They’ve reformed it over the years, back in the 70’s you could just buy a bucket of fish and go out to the beach, feed the dolphins, and basically give them a big dolphin hug, if you wanted to.
Now it’s well ran, with several employees and a group of volunteers, to make sure no dolphins are hugged. Even though we dream about hugging dolphins, it’s not good for them, and they can catch our diseases. So DON’T HUG DOLPHINS! And while you’re at it, don’t wear sunscreen either; it burns their little dolphin eyes.
These dolphin guards take their jobs very seriously. As Matt found out first hand. He was the first to run down to greet the dolphins, but his dolphin lovefest was cut short by a dolphin guard repeatedly screaming from down the beach “GET AWAY FROM THE DOLPHINS!”. We didn’t realize you couldn’t just wait down at the water’s edge for the dolphins. You have to stay back about a 100 feet away from the water at the dolphin information desk. They do this because the dolphins will think it’s feeding time, but feed time won’t come for another hour, and we don’t want to mislead any dolphins.
Finally, feeding time came, and we rushed down to the beach along with a hundred other tourists to meet our aquatic mammal brethren, or should I say sister-en, because they only feed the females. The dolphins are completely wild, and will swim right up to your knees. It’s really exciting, even if we are teaching bad habits. But the excitement is cut short once again by a dolphin guard who drones on and on about dolphins in an inaudible microphone. All we can think is, “Just feed the freaking dolphins!” and finally they did, but of course, we weren’t picked to feed them.
4 volunteers, with a bucket of fish each, wade out to the dolphins and pick from the eager crowd, a few lucky dolphin lovers get to feed them. It helps if you are really old, really young, or really hot. Cassie should have shown more skin on that frigid morning at 8am. It would have helped our chances. We were really disappointed they didn’t pick us: we were there first, we love dolphins (it’s Matt’s spirit animal, after all), and we even pretended to laugh at all their stupid dolphins jokes.
At the same time the dolphins are being fed, giant pelicans are lurking around for a free meal as well. A volunteer lures the pelicans away with a decoy bucket of fish so they don’t bother the precious dolphins. The pelicans shouldn’t be overlooked. They’re massive, and quite impressive. Shortly after the feeding, the crowds and dolphins dissipate. But if you hang around, a few dolphins linger by the shore, which is nice because there are about 100 less people to share them with.
We’ve met people who were disappointed by Monkey Mia, but we thought it was pretty cool and one of the most memorable sights on the west coast. Just don’t show up thinking you’re going to have a deep heart-connection with your spirit animal. It’s all business for these dolphins: they show up, they eat, and they leave. There are no tricks or dolphin hugs.
After all the dolphin excitment, we jumped back on the tour bus, or “Landshark” as our group named it (Thank you, Matt…). We drove to Ocean Park, an awesome little open-air aquarium that houses all kinds of fish, sea snakes, sea turtles, one very interesting, color-changing squid (which was Cassie’s favorite), and a whole bunch of sharks. There was also one very big Tiger Shark.
The enormous outdoor shark tank was very cool, and something we had never seen before. It looked like a set from the Kevin Costner blockbuster movie: “Waterworld”. The tank was made of corrugated metal and wood, and there was even an old, rusty windmill in the background, and of course lots of man-eating sharks. A large walkway stretches over the shark tank so you can only view the sharks from above. This makes the presence of the Tiger Shark even more eerie, as only its giant dorsal fin can be seen. After a tour of the more basic sea creatures, we got to see them feed the sharks, which was AWESOME! They tied a dead fish onto a wooden pole and dipped it into the water until a feeding frenzy ensued. Deadly animals eating things is always awesome. Another great thing about Ocean Park is that they really seem to care about the animals, instead of a profit. So go here and support the little guys and their ferocious man-eating sharks.
Next stop was the Stromatolites. Basically, these are underwater colonies of microorganisms that live on strange rock formations. They are the oldest living organisms on the planet and are billions of years old. They created Oxygen before it existed naturally in our atmosphere. They aren’t particularly cute, nor do they attack dangling dead fish on a stick, but they are cool, and we wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for them, so they are worth a visit. There’s a triangular-shaped pier that is constructed over them, offering great views of these odd formations.
Well done, Stromatolites, well done old friend.
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