Fund Clean-Up projects and research projects in Shark Bay WA

We are Shark Bay Eco Tours and Ocean Park Aquarium. We started in the early 2000s as a pink snapper breeding station to aid with the population recovery of pink snapper in the Shark Bay Area. Over the years we moved our sight to education, and aim to educate everyone that visits us in Shark Bay about the history and wildlife of our world heritage area. On top of our usual operations we have our hand in several research projects. We are helping research the population of critically endangered white spotted wedge fish and leopard sharks, as well as occasionally getting identification shots of grey nurse and whale sharks in the region of Shark Bay. As well as ID our year round manta ray population. We've also taken part in tiger shark research, where a camera and fisheries tag were placed on a tiger shark named ‘Boof’ after he was released from Ocean Park Aquarium. The camera remained connected for 24 hours and provided great insight into what happens after a tiger shark has been released from captivity. That additional fisheries tag means that if ‘Boof’ is caught, the number on his tag will need to be reported to Fisheries of Western Australia.

The money donated will be used to fund projects like the above. But also Shark Bay is home to mainland Australia's most westerly point, Steep Point. This is an extremely popular fishing spot and there is a massive amount of discarded fishing equipment below the cliffs. In our last clean up dive we covered less than 5% of the area and pulled out over 100kg of waste. Steep Point being over a 90-minute boat journey out takes a fair amount of fuel to reach, your donations will help cover our fuel cost to get our volunteers out there.

The Shark Bay world Heritage Area is a special place, meeting every requirement to be a UNESCO World Heritage Area. Its one of the best places in the world to see the Stromatolites and is an important rest area for migrating humpback whales. We also have 10% of the worlds dugong population, the 2nd most researched dolphins in the world, the 2 largest sea grass meadows in the world and so much more. Our home here in Shark Bay is under constant threat, and with aiding researchers and carrying out conservation projects ourselves we aim to protect and educate every person that visits us.