Shark Bay ( Malgana: ''Gathaagudu'', "two waters") is a
World Heritage Site
A World Heritage Site is a landmark or area with legal protection by an international convention administered by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). World Heritage Sites are designated by UNESCO for ...
in the
Gascoyne
The Gascoyne region is one of the nine administrative regions of Western Australia. It is located in the northwest of Western Australia, and consists of the local government areas of Carnarvon, Exmouth, Shark Bay and Upper Gascoyne. The Ga ...
region of
Western Australia
Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to t ...
. The http://www.environment.gov.au/heritage/places/world/shark-bay area is located approximately north of
Perth
Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia. It is the fourth most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of 2.1 million (80% of the state) living in Greater Perth in 2020. Perth is ...
, on the westernmost point of the Australian continent.
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a List of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international coope ...
's official listing of Shark Bay as a World Heritage Site reads:
:
History
The record of Australian Aboriginal occupation of Shark Bay extends to years BP. At that time most of the area was dry land, rising sea levels flooding Shark Bay between BP and BP. A considerable number of aboriginal
midden
A midden (also kitchen midden or shell heap) is an old dump for domestic waste which may consist of animal bone, human excrement, botanical material, mollusc shells, potsherds, lithics (especially debitage), and other artifacts and eco ...
sites have been found, especially on Peron Peninsula and Dirk Hartog Island which provide evidence of some of the foods gathered from the waters and nearby land areas.
An expedition led by Dirk Hartog happened upon the area in 1616, becoming the second group of
Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...
ans known to have visited Australia. (The crew of the '' Duyfken'', under Willem Janszoon, had visited Cape York in 1606). The area was given the name Shark Bay by the English explorer
William Dampier
William Dampier (baptised 5 September 1651; died March 1715) was an English explorer, pirate, privateer, navigator, and naturalist who became the first Englishman to explore parts of what is today Australia, and the first person to circumnav ...
, on 7 August 1699. Shark Bay was also visited by
Louis Aleno de St Aloüarn
Louis Francois Marie Aleno de Saint Aloüarn (25 July 173827 October 1772) was a notable French Navy officer and explorer.
St Aloüarn was the first European to make a formal, but now unrecognised, claim of sovereignty — on behalf of F ...
in 1772,
Nicolas Baudin
Nicolas Thomas Baudin (; 17 February 1754 – 16 September 1803) was a French explorer, cartographer, naturalist and hydrographer, most notable for his explorations in Australia and the southern Pacific.
Biography
Early career
Born a comm ...
in 1801 to 1803 and
Louis de Freycinet
Louis Claude de Saulces de Freycinet (7 August 1779 – 18 August 1841) was a French Navy officer. He circumnavigated the earth, and in 1811 published the first map to show a full outline of the coastline of Australia.
Biography
He was born at ...
in 1818. Europeans, mostly pastoralists, settled in Shark Bay during the 1860s to 1870s.Pearling developed rapidly from 1870.
Commercial whaling was conducted in the bay in the first half of the 20th century by Norwegian owned factory ships and their catcher vessels. In the late 1930s up to 1,000 humpback whales were taken per season.
The heritagelisted area had a population of fewer than people as at the 2011 census and a coastline of over . The half-dozen small communities making up this population occupy less than 1% of the total area.
Shark Bay World Heritage site
The World Heritage status of the region was created and negotiated in 1991, the first such site in Western Australia. The site was gazetted on the Australian National Heritage List on 21 May 2007 under the .
Protected areas
Declared as a World Heritage Site in 1991, the site covers an area of , of which about 70 per cent are marine waters. It includes many protected areas and conservation reserves, including
Shark Bay Marine Park
The Shark Bay Marine Park is protected marine park located within the UNESCO World Heritagelisted Shark Bay, in the Gascoyne region of Western Australia. The marine park is situated over north of Perth and north of Geraldton.
The marine ...
Zuytdorp Nature Reserve
''Zuytdorp'', also ''Zuiddorp'' (meaning "South Village", after Zuiddorpe, an extant village in the south of Zeeland in the Netherlands, near the Belgian border) was an 18th-century trading ship of the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oost ...
and numerous protected islands.Denham and Useless Loop both fall within the boundary of the site, yet are specifically excluded from it.
Landforms
The bay itself covers an area of , with an average depth of . It is divided by shallow banks and has many peninsulas and islands. The coastline is over long. There are about of
limestone
Limestone ( calcium carbonate ) is a type of carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of . Limestone forms w ...
cliffs overlooking the bay. One spectacular segment of cliffs is known as the
Zuytdorp Cliffs
The Zuytdorp Cliffs extend for about along a rugged, spectacular and little visited segment of the Western Australian Indian Ocean coast. The cliffs extend from just south of the mouth of the Murchison River at Kalbarri, to Pepper Point sou ...
. The bay is located in the transition zone between three major climatic regions and between two major
botanical
Botany, also called , plant biology or phytology, is the science of plant life and a branch of biology. A botanist, plant scientist or phytologist is a scientist who specialises in this field. The term "botany" comes from the Ancient Greek w ...
provinces.
Peron Peninsula divides the bay and is the home of its largest settlements as well as a
National Park
A national park is a natural park in use for conservation purposes, created and protected by national governments. Often it is a reserve of natural, semi-natural, or developed land that a sovereign state declares or owns. Although individual ...
at the northern end.
Dirk Hartog Island
A dirk is a long bladed thrusting dagger.Chisholm, Hugh (ed.), ''Dagger'', The Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th ed., Vol. VII, New York, NY: Cambridge University Press (1910), p. 729 Historically, it gained its name from the Highland Dirk (Sco ...
is of historical significance due to landings upon it by early explorers. In 1616, Dirk Hartog landed at Inscription Point on the north end of the island and marked his discovery with a pewter plate, inscribed with the date and nailed to a post. This plate was then replaced by Willem de Vlamingh and returned to the Netherlands. It is now kept in the Rijksmuseum. There is a replica in the Shark Bay Discovery Centre in Denham.
Bernier and Dorre islands in the north-west corner of the heritage area are among the last-remaining habitats of two varieties of Australian mammals, hare-wallabies, threatened with extinction. They are used, with numerous other smaller islands throughout the marine park, to release threatened species that are being bred at Project Eden in François Peron National Park. These islands are free of feral non-native animals which might predate the threatened species, and so provide a safe haven of pristine environment on which to restore species that are threatened on the mainland.
The
Australian Wildlife Conservancy
The Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC) is an Australian independent, nonprofit organisation, working to conserve threatened wildlife and ecosystems in Australia. This is principally achieved through the acquisition of extensive areas of land ...
is the guardian of
Faure Island
Faure Island is a 58 km2 island pastoral lease and nature reserve, east of the Francois Peron National Park on the Peron Peninsula, in Shark Bay, Western Australia. It lies in line with the Monkey Mia resort to the west, and the Wooram ...
, off
Monkey Mia
Monkey Mia is a popular tourist destination located about 900 km north of Perth, Western Australia. The reserve is 25 km northeast of the town of Denham in the Shark Bay Marine Park and World Heritage Site.
The main attraction are ...
. Seasonally,
sea turtle
Sea turtles (superfamily Chelonioidea), sometimes called marine turtles, are reptiles of the order Testudines and of the suborder Cryptodira. The seven existing species of sea turtles are the flatback, green, hawksbill, leatherback, loggerhe ...
Shark Bay is an area of major zoological importance. It is home to about 10,000 dugongs ('sea cows'), around 12.5% of the world's population, and there are many
Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin
The Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin (''Tursiops aduncus'') is a species of bottlenose dolphin. This dolphin grows to long, and weighs up to . It lives in the waters around India, northern Australia, South China, the Red Sea, and the eastern ...
s, particularly at Monkey Mia. The dolphins here have been particularly friendly since the 1960s. The area supports 26
threatened
Threatened species are any species (including animals, plants and fungi) which are vulnerable to endangerment in the near future. Species that are threatened are sometimes characterised by the population dynamics measure of '' critical depe ...
Australian
mammal
Mammals () are a group of vertebrate animals constituting the class Mammalia (), characterized by the presence of mammary glands which in females produce milk for feeding (nursing) their young, a neocortex (a region of the brain), fur ...
species, over 230 species of
bird
Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweig ...
, and nearly 150 species of
reptile
Reptiles, as most commonly defined are the animals in the class Reptilia ( ), a paraphyletic grouping comprising all sauropsids except birds. Living reptiles comprise turtles, crocodilians, squamates ( lizards and snakes) and rhynchocephalia ...
. It is an important breeding and nursery ground for
fish
Fish are Aquatic animal, aquatic, craniate, gill-bearing animals that lack Limb (anatomy), limbs with Digit (anatomy), digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and Chondrichthyes, cartilaginous and bony fish as we ...
,
crustacean
Crustaceans (Crustacea, ) form a large, diverse arthropod taxon which includes such animals as decapoda, decapods, ostracoda, seed shrimp, branchiopoda, branchiopods, argulidae, fish lice, krill, remipedes, isopoda, isopods, barnacles, copepods, ...
s, and coelenterates. There are over 323 fish species, many of them
shark
Sharks are a group of elasmobranch fish characterized by a cartilaginous skeleton, five to seven gill slits on the sides of the head, and pectoral fins that are not fused to the head. Modern sharks are classified within the clade Selachi ...
s and rays.
Some bottlenose dolphins in Shark Bay exhibit one of the few known cases of tool use in marine mammals (along with
sea otter
The sea otter (''Enhydra lutris'') is a marine mammal native to the coasts of the northern and eastern North Pacific Ocean. Adult sea otters typically weigh between , making them the heaviest members of the weasel family, but among the smal ...
s): they protect their nose with a
sponge
Sponges, the members of the phylum Porifera (; meaning 'pore bearer'), are a basal animal clade as a sister of the diploblasts. They are multicellular organisms that have bodies full of pores and channels allowing water to circulate throu ...
while foraging for food in the sandy sea bottom. Humpback and
southern right whale
The southern right whale (''Eubalaena australis'') is a baleen whale, one of three species classified as right whales belonging to the genus ''Eubalaena''. Southern right whales inhabit oceans south of the Equator, between the latitudes of 20 ...
s use the waters of the bay as migratory staging post while other species such as Bryde's whale come into the bay less frequently but to feed or rest. The threatened
green
Green is the color between cyan and yellow on the visible spectrum. It is evoked by light which has a dominant wavelength of roughly 495570 nm. In subtractive color systems, used in painting and color printing, it is created by a combin ...
and loggerhead sea turtles nest on the bay's sandy beaches. The largest fish in the world, the
whale shark
The whale shark (''Rhincodon typus'') is a slow-moving, filter feeder, filter-feeding carpet shark and the largest known Extant taxon, extant fish species. The largest confirmed individual had a length of .McClain CR, Balk MA, Benfield MC, Bran ...
, gathers in the bay during the April and May full moons.
Flora
Shark Bay has the largest known area of
seagrass
Seagrasses are the only flowering plants which grow in marine environments. There are about 60 species of fully marine seagrasses which belong to four families ( Posidoniaceae, Zosteraceae, Hydrocharitaceae and Cymodoceaceae), all in the ...
, with
seagrass meadow
A seagrass meadow or seagrass bed is an underwater ecosystem formed by seagrasses. Seagrasses are marine (saltwater) plants found in shallow coastal waters and in the brackish waters of estuaries. Seagrasses are flowering plants with stems an ...
s covering over of the bay. It includes the
Wooramel Seagrass Bank
Wooramel Seagrass Bank is a large deposit of carbonate sediment, a sand bank, formed by diverse communities of seagrasses off the coast of Carnarvon, Western Australia. The mattes of seagrass meadows and stands consolidate a shallow platform of s ...
, the largest seagrass bank in the world and contains a ''Posidonia australis'' meadow formed by a single plant, the largest in the world.
Shark Bay also contains the largest number of seagrass species ever recorded in one place; twelve species have been found, with up to nine occurring together in some places. The seagrasses are a vital part of the complex environment of the bay. Over thousands of years, sediment and shell fragments have accumulated in the seagrasses to form vast expanses of seagrass beds. This has raised the sea floor, making the bay shallower. Seagrasses are the basis of the food chain in Shark Bay, providing home and shelter to various marine species and attracting the dugong population.
In Shark Bay's hot, dry climate, evaporation greatly exceeds the annual precipitation rate. Thus, the seawater in the shallow bays becomes very salt-concentrated, or 'hypersaline'. Seagrasses also restrict the tidal flow of waters through the bay area, preventing the ocean tides from diluting the sea water. The water of the bay is 1.5 to 2 times more salty than the surrounding ocean waters.
Stromatolites
Based on growth rate it is believed that about 1,000 years ago cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) began building up stromatolites in Hamelin Pool at the Hamelin Station Reserve in the southern part of the bay. These structures are modern equivalents of the earliest signs of life on Earth, with fossilized stromatolites being found dating from 3.5 billion years ago at North Pole near Marble Bar, in Western Australia, and are considered the longest continuing biological lineage. They were first identified in 1956 at Hamelin Pool as a living species, before that only being known in the fossil record. Hamelin Pool contains the most diverse and abundant examples of living stromatolite forms in the world. Other occurrences are found at Lake Clifton near Mandurah and Lake Thetis near Cervantes. It is hypothesized that some stromatolites contain a new form of
chlorophyll
Chlorophyll (also chlorophyl) is any of several related green pigments found in cyanobacteria and in the chloroplasts of algae and plants. Its name is derived from the Greek words , ("pale green") and , ("leaf"). Chlorophyll allow plants to ...
,
chlorophyll f
Chlorophyll ''f'' is a type form of chlorophyll that absorbs further in the red (infrared light) than other chlorophylls. In 2010, it was reported from stromatolites from Western Australia's Shark Bay.
The finding was made by scientists at ...
.
Shark Bay World Heritage Discovery Centre
Facilities around the World Heritage area, provided by the
Shire of Shark Bay
The Shire of Shark Bay is a local government area of Western Australia in the Gascoyne region. It has an area of 25,423 km2 and a population of about 950. It is made up of two peninsulas, located at the westernmost point of Australia. ...
and the WA Department of Environment and Conservation, include the Shark Bay World Heritage Discovery Centre in Denham which provides interactive displays and comprehensive information about the features of the region.
Access
Access to Shark Bay is by air via Shark Bay Airport, and by the World Heritage Drive, a 150 km link road between Denham and the
Overlander Roadhouse
__NOTOC__
The Overlander Roadhouse is a petrol service station in Western Australia, between Geraldton and Carnarvon on the North West Coastal Highway.
Its remoteness has led to the area around it being known as ''Overlander'', though the ...
National parks and reserves in the World Heritage Area
*
Bernier Island
Bernier Island is one of three islands that comprise the ''Bernier and Dorre Island Nature Reserve'' in the Shark Bay World Heritage area in Western Australia.
The island and the neighbouring Dorre Island were locations for a lock hospital i ...
Monkey Mia
Monkey Mia is a popular tourist destination located about 900 km north of Perth, Western Australia. The reserve is 25 km northeast of the town of Denham in the Shark Bay Marine Park and World Heritage Site.
The main attraction are ...
*
Shark Bay Marine Park
The Shark Bay Marine Park is protected marine park located within the UNESCO World Heritagelisted Shark Bay, in the Gascoyne region of Western Australia. The marine park is situated over north of Perth and north of Geraldton.
The marine ...
Zuytdorp Nature Reserve
''Zuytdorp'', also ''Zuiddorp'' (meaning "South Village", after Zuiddorpe, an extant village in the south of Zeeland in the Netherlands, near the Belgian border) was an 18th-century trading ship of the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oost ...
Bernier Island
Bernier Island is one of three islands that comprise the ''Bernier and Dorre Island Nature Reserve'' in the Shark Bay World Heritage area in Western Australia.
The island and the neighbouring Dorre Island were locations for a lock hospital i ...
*
Dirk Hartog Island
A dirk is a long bladed thrusting dagger.Chisholm, Hugh (ed.), ''Dagger'', The Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th ed., Vol. VII, New York, NY: Cambridge University Press (1910), p. 729 Historically, it gained its name from the Highland Dirk (Sco ...
*
Faure Island
Faure Island is a 58 km2 island pastoral lease and nature reserve, east of the Francois Peron National Park on the Peron Peninsula, in Shark Bay, Western Australia. It lies in line with the Monkey Mia resort to the west, and the Wooram ...
The Shark Bay area has three bioregions within the
Interim Biogeographic Regionalisation for Australia
The Interim Biogeographic Regionalisation for Australia (IBRA) is a biogeographic regionalisation of Australia developed by the Australian government's Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population, and Communities. It was deve ...
(IBRA) system: Carnarvon, Geraldton Sandplains, and Yalgoo. The bioregions are further divided into subbioregions:
*
Carnarvon bioregion
The Carnarvon xeric shrublands is a deserts and xeric shrublands ecoregion of Western Australia. The ecoregion is coterminous with the Carnarvon Interim Biogeographic Regionalisation for Australia (IBRA) bioregion.Geraldton Sandplains bioregion (GS) –
** Geraldton Hills sub region (GS1) – Zuytdorp Nature Reserve area
** Leseur sub region (GS2) – (not represented in area)
*
Yalgoo bioregion
Yalgoo is an interim Australian bioregion located in Western Australia. It has an area of . The bioregion, together with the Avon Wheatbelt and Geraldton Sandplains bioregions, is part of the larger Southwest Australia savanna ecoregion as cla ...
(YAL) –
** Tallering sub region (YAL2) (not represented in area)
** Edel subregion (YAL1) – Bernier, Dorre and Dirk Hartog Islands
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a List of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international coope ...