Roger Smith
Elegant Sea Snake (Hydrophis elegans) at Ningaloo reef Martin Maderthaner
Estimated reading time: 8 minutes
4 centuries after a spectacular coincidence that led a Dutch navigator to the Ningaloo Coast we had a few unexpected camera coincidences as part of our citizen science work
Coincidence brought Dirk Hartog to Ningaloo
On a sparkling morning in June 2022 I was cruising northwards on the Indian Ocean, just outside Ningaloo reef in Western Australia, on a 30 kilometre journey to the Muiron Islands.
Off to our starboard great swells, exhausted by their 8,000 kilometre journey from Africa, arched their streaky backs and smashed onto the outer reef, finally giving up their energy — and cargo of life giving nutrients — into Ningaloo’s warm lagoons.
My guests and I watched this pounding cycle of ocean versus reef from the comfort of our expedition boat.
Our aim on that day was to take citizen science surveys beside the rarely visited South Muiron Island but the staggering amount of wildlife we saw on the journey slowed us down, just like the waves hitting the reef, unveiling the wonders of the Indian Ocean.
Coincidentally, near this same location 406 years earlier, Dutch navigator, Dirk Hartog, having also travelled all the way from Africa, came to an unscheduled stop near the most westerly point of an island continent we now call Australia.
In 1616, due to a navigational miscalculation, Hartog overshot his intended destination — the East Indies — to become the first European to “bump” into Western Australia, an event that changed the world map.
He had inadvertently confirmed the existence of a large land mass that European navigators and cartographers would take the next 180 years to fully map.
Hartog would have been acutely aware of the significance of his landfall — he guessed, rightly, that he’d blundered upon the then strongly speculated “Great South Land” — so why did he stay only a few days?
Maybe it was because he was encumbered with a boatful of gold and silver provided by his employers, the rapacious Dutch East Indies Company, to buy spice in the East Indies, so he was under pressure to pursue commerce before curiosity.
Briefly succumbing to explorers itch he followed and charted the coast northwards before peeling off at Ningaloo to resume his journey to the Spice Islands where he would trade his bounty for cloves and nutmeg to be sold for a fortune back in Europe.
Hartog did not have the opportunity to enjoy the fame that came from his navigational coincidence for he died 5 years later, aged only 41, but his name for the remote new land, Eendrachtsland (after his ship’s name, Eendracht), remained on Dutch charts for many years.
Little has changed in the section of Eendrachtsland that Hartog saw in 1616, although in 1804 the entire continent was finally named Australia by another navigator, Matthew Flinders (who, in yet another near coincidence, died at 40 soon after he finished mapping the Australian coastline).
As in Hartog’s time, the Ningaloo coast remains one of the least inhabited and understood places on earth.
So, on our boat on that sunny morning in June 2022, that remoteness and the sparkling vastness of the Indian Ocean enthralled us all on our quest of discovery for “spices” Hartog’s commercial imperatives precluded him from enjoying — the incredible wildlife bounty of the region.
Coincidences at Ningaloo: an ocean packed with wildlife
In anticipation, my guests had their cameras on the ready, searching for any wildlife action to add to our citizen science lists during our adventure into the Ningaloo Coast World Heritage Area. Little did we know what this day had in store for us.
To begin proceedings a Humpback Whale surfaced nearby then followed our course, inspecting us, for about 10 minutes before heading further out to sea (coincidentally, in the same direction Hartog took!). This was the first in many whale sightings.
Then thousands of Common Noddies and other terns circled a large pod of dolphins, the entire mammal/bird gathering hunting large schools of bait fish that darkened the ocean. Once again this scene repeated many times.
Flying fish flashed past, their “wing fins” glinting in the sun like giant oceanic dragonflies. Numerous Whale Sharks slipped by — viewed from above the surface they appear as huge, spotty smudges — mouths agape, feeding on plankton.
We encountered turtles, sea snakes, manta rays, sharks and, at one point, a boiling patch of ocean the size of a house where a pack of tuna were hunting in a chaotic, bloody frenzy that left me glad not to be a small fish….or a bird (more on this below).
Up and down, left and right, the sea was alive: none of us had seen anything like this. At every sighting our skipper powered down to allow us to enjoy what we’d spotted. My guests’ cameras clicked away, capturing everything to help us document the staggering array of sea-life we’d encountered.
Fast, modern, digital cameras provide a unique ability to point and shoot, multiple times, not really knowing what the sensor has captured until we look at the photos on a larger screen. These cameras are becoming the primary tool for documenting citizen science findings. (Read more about cameras: Wild Echidna up close )
On this day hundreds of photos were taken by my enthusiastic group and later that evening the results started coming in as people checked their SD cards in their computers.
Alone in my room I was hammered with WhatsApp messages from my guests asking me what they’d captured whilst I did my best to ID the photos they sent of Ospreys, Beach Stone-Curlew, jelly fish, turtle skeletons and much more. (You can view many of these photos here)
I was thrilled by this group’s efforts to help science by finding new or interesting “stuff”; they were all “normal” non-scientific people — so am I — but they were really getting into being citizen scientists.
Then a picture arrived on my phone that reminded me of the significance of coincidences, helping me realise what an utterly incredible day we’d had.
It was a heavily cropped photo (above) of a mixed group of terns hunting bait fish and there, by coincidence, a tuna was caught leaping from the water in an apparent attempt to capture a tern.
Like Hartog, the tuna had made a slight navigational error, giving the tern time to take evasive action and get on with catching fish.
Our coincidental sightings may not have been as world shattering as Hartog’s but they would become the highlights our expedition into the unforgettable waters of Ningaloo when the Indian Ocean unveiled an abundance of wildlife in waters off the coast of a land once known to the Dutch as Eendrachtsland.
NOTES
Embrace coincidences at Ningaloo and Western Australia
Echidna Walkabout Nature Tours and Australian Geographic Travel conduct birding, wildlife and photography tours in Western Australia:
Discover more about Dirk Hartog’s voyage from the Western Australian Museum
We recognise Aboriginal People as the original human inhabitants of the land we now call Australia. This story purposefully steers away from the word “discovery” when referring to “findings” of European navigators along the Australian coast.
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