Blue-spotted fantail ray, Turquoise Bay, Cape Range National Park
We drove to Cape Range National Park this morning. On the way y0u pass through the Australian Navy’s radio station, which has some pretty impressive antenna arrays. Right at the base there were three emu walking along the road. The road passes by a lighthouse atop a rocky hill, then turns south on the opposite side of the cape from Exmouth and goes in to the park.
We were intending to snorkel at Lakeside; however, the road to that site is closed (many of the roads were damaged by Cyclone Carlos in late February) so instead we continued on to Turquoise Beach. There we did the drift snorkel, which has exceptional fish. You enter the water at the south and there is a strong current that carries you north to where you exit just before a sand point which juts out a bit into the ocean. At that point there is a very strong rip current which goes out to sea.
We walked back to the start and did the drift a second time. Then we walked over to the bay area and snorkeled there for another hour. Here there were less fish, the water was more cloudy, but the coral was much better, though not as good as at Coral Bay. Since there is almost no current in this part of the bay you could stay in one place longer without having to work hard. In the drift on the other side the current was about as strong as you could swim against with flippers, so it carried you along quite quickly, unless you worked to stay put.