Patagonia

Today, with the water sheeny and clear, it’s wildlife that he has in mind.

And wildlife there is, in abundance. For many, spying any sort of megafauna – be it a dolphin, shark or whale – may be a once in a lifetime experience. But here, as the boat cruises slowly along, dozens of turtles flit around on the reef. Dugongs, mothers and calves, trundle by, stopping to munch on sea grass. Waterspouts, like geysers out in the deep, suggest a couple of stray members of the annual humpback whale migration.

Then, towards lunchtime, the wind picks up ever so slightly and there is a sense that something may be about to reveal itself.

Outside the lee of the boat, fins appear. The little spurts from the water are a dead giveaway, as are the jet-black heads that breach the ocean’s surface.

Orcas.

Once everyone has caught their breath, Dre says these are members of a group that lives in the tropics.

“They hunt all along the coast,” Dre explains. “They come down for the whale migration to hunt. As humpback numbers have increased, so have the orca numbers. We’ve even seen them in the Gulf itself.”

As in all parts of Australia, there are strict protocols in interacting with whales. We kill the engine and let the killers do their thing in turn, not interfering, just watching from afar. This afternoon the pod cruises by, with seemingly not a care in the world. Maybe they will hunt later, but for now they are headed south, out into the deep, a symbol of the health of this remarkable ecosystem.

Nyinggulu is now internationally celebrated for its wildlife and biodiversity but, by comparison, the Exmouth Gulf is largely unknown outside of Western Australia.

It’s one of those peculiar situations – if the Gulf were transplanted to anywhere else in the world, out of the shadow of its more famous cousin Nyinggulu, it would likely be considered one of the most important marine environments on earth.

Seagrass meadows, sponge beds, mangrove forests and with more than 850 recorded species of fish, the Gulf is also one of the most significant humpback whale nurseries of any ocean. Yet so much of it remains understudied and, as a direct consequence, under-protected. 

In 2011, Nyinggulu was declared a World Heritage site. Exmouth Gulf was expected to be included alongside Nyinggulu but was left out of the Australian government's final application to the United Nations.

In fact, UNESCO, the arm of the UN which considers World Heritage applications, had recommended the Australian government “consider inclusion of the Exmouth Gulf on the grounds of ecological linkages between the Ningaloo Reef and the gulf.”

But at the time of the submission, in the early 2000s, there were other interests competing to develop the region for industry. As a result, only a small part of north-western side of the Gulf is included in the marine park: and with the Gulf under-protected, the spectre of development remains.

Currently, two projects are at play: the construction of an industrial port precinct on the western side of the Gulf, and a saltworks that will stretch up its remote, rarely visited eastern side.

Slated for a place called Qualing Pool, just south of Exmouth, the establishment of the port will first see dredging of the seagrass meadows with heavy volume shipping to follow. The idea is to have more jobs but will, opponents say, jut almost a kilometre into the world’s largest humpback whale nursery.  

And then there is the saltworks. Western Australia is often referred to as Australia’s quarry, as more iron ore is dug out of the ground here than anywhere else in the world. But the same thing could be said about salt. In fact, WA is one of the world’s largest producers of salt.

There are currently multiple, enormous saltworks operating along WA’s northwest coastline: in Shark Bay, Onslow and Port Hedland. Now, international company K+S have applied to get in on the action.

The proposal will see a mangrove system listed as a Wetland of National Significance levelled. This will happen in one of the last strongholds of the critically endangered green sawfish. The result of the project will be an industrial complex of 210 square kilometres, stretching along the coastline.

As K+S is based in Europe, the conservation group Protect Ningaloo has come up with an idea to convey the project’s size: by overlaying the project onto a graphic of cities in Germany and Australia.  

The project would fill most of central Berlin. In Sydney, the bulk would stretch from the Northern Beaches to Newtown and from Bondi out to Burwood. For those not familiar with the ins and outs of these two cities, picture instead 12,000 Melbourne Cricket Grounds.

Tim Winton, who has worked for the last three decades to try and convey the importance of the ecology and beauty of the North West Cape, wrote and narrated the Nyinggulu series. The project filled several years of his life, and he was exposed to biology and culture that he had never before encountered.

Tim first travelled to the region in the early 1990s and was an advocate for gaining World Heritage protections around Nyinggulu in the early 2000s. Now, over twenty years on, he says he cannot believe there is still a discussion taking place about protecting these areas around the North West Cape.

“The idea that we have these massive, intact areas in Western Australia that are the roaring exceptions to the global norm; that we would offer these up to corporate interests is inconceivable,” Tim said.

“It would be like handing over the crown jewels of the Western Australian coastline. If we do this, it will prove that there are no bounds, that there is nothing that cannot be chewed up and spat out.”

“There can be so much inertia, so much resistance in seeking to protect these places. But what we have here is a beacon of what can be achieved when we place the natural world above short term, financial gain.”

This is not the first time that the Gulf has been threatened.

In the late 2010s, the global oil and gas company Subsea 7 proposed to build a large pipeline fabrication facility and towing operation in Exmouth Gulf. A coalition of environmental groups from across WA advocated to stop this from happening and the project was abandoned.

This upswelling of support also made an impression on the state government: there is now a commitment to joint management with the Traditional Owners of the North West Cape.

Back on shore that evening, with the sun setting over the reef, Dre is asked if the spell of Nyinggulu and the Gulf has ever worn off after all his years of exploring the coast. “How can it?” he says. “It’s a place that constantly surprises you.”

Read "The Burrup Hub: Big Gas in a Big Land" - the first story in this three-part series on huge resource projects threatening coastal ecosystems in the west.