Hey everyone, welcome to World Heritage Journey.
I'm Joel on the Road, thanks for joining me.
Today, we're at Shark Bay Conservation Area, in Western Australia.
Behind me you can see the beautiful, shimmering expanse of Shark Bay, one of the most important
areas for all life on Earth.
It's on the World Heritage List for three reasons: because of the incredible diversity of life here,
both in the water, and on land; the enormous seagrass beds that lie just under the surface;
and, it was also the site of one of the most startling discoveries in scientific history.
Let's check it out.
The Shark Bay World Heritage Site is located at the most westerly point of Australia.
It covers a surprisingly large area of around 2.2 million hectares, of which about 70% is
water.
and it's on the traditional lands of the Malgana, Nhanda, and Yingkarta indigenous groups, the
traditional owners and custodians of these lands.
Because of Shark Bay's shallow depth, at just an average of nine metres, and its very limited access to the
ocean, through two small channels with shallow sand bars, the bay's waters are extremely
salty, and quite warm too.
It's a meeting point of three climates: cold ocean currents, warm tropical waters, and
dry desert heat on land.
Shark Bay is a unique environment, and one where many unusual species can survive, and thrive.
So the dark patches that you can see out in the bay behind me, are actually meadows of sea grass,
and Shark Bay is one of the most important places in the world for sea grass.
There's over 4000 square kilometres of sea grass meadows here in Shark Bay,
and one area, the Wooramel seagrass bank, is the largest seagrass bank in the entire world.
Now, it's tempting to think of them as just seaweed, but they're actually really important ecosystems
supporting a huge array of marine life, particularly dugongs or "sea cows" as they're sometimes known.
And of course they're not seaweed at all, because there's a big variety of species of sea grass.
They're just like land plants, they have roots and flower systems too.
Now there's 60 different varieties of seagrass across the world,
12 of them are found here at Shark Bay - particularly wireweed, and ribbonweed.
As I mentioned earlier, one of the key aspects to the Shark Bay World Heritage listing is the incredible biodiversity
that the area has, particularly in the water that you can see behind me.
There's over 11,000 dugongs (or sea-cows) that live here in the Bay, which is around 10% of the world's dugong population, which is actually quite staggering!
As the name suggests, of course there are heaps of different shark species in Shark Bay as well,
along with different types of turtles,
rays, and some incredible dolphins too.
In fact, where we are now, a place called Monkey Mia, a team of researchers and scientists feed wild dolphins by hand off the beach every morning,
and it's absolutely spectacular.
So the black objects that you can see behind me are what's known as stromatolites,
and although they look just like rocks, they're actually fascinating, because they're some of the oldest known life forms on Earth.
They're what's known as microbial mats, or mounds, where essentially a clump of microbes has stuck together, and then they've hardened when they've expired.
More microbes stick to the outside, and then they expire and harden. This happens again and again, until they reach the large sizes
seen here at Shark Bay.
Because of the extremely salty water here in Shark Bay, the conditions are extremely similar to conditions on Earth
for much of its history, and for over four billion years, stromatolites like these were the only forms of life on Earth, which is absolutely incredible.
Now these stromatolites have been known to science for a long time, but it was thought they'd expired many many years ago.
So when a colony of living stromatolites was discovered right here in Shark Bay in the 1950s, it caused quite
a stir in the scientific community, as I'm sure you can imagine. It's absolutely fascinating to come here and see these incredible creatures in their natural habitat.
Well, I hope you've enjoyed this look at Shark Bay Conservation area in Western Australia.
I've learned a awful lot today,
and I hope you have too. And it's just such a beautiful environment, that it's been really, really fun.
But that's it from me, thank you so much for watching.
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We'll see you next time.