Shark Bay World Heritage Area is testimony to unique wonders of the natural world. If you love wildlife, you’ll love Shark Bay. World Heritage listing recognises its extraordinary global significance - outstanding natural beauty, biological diversity, a fascinating ecology, unique geology, and a 30,000-year indigenous cultural history.

There’s a long history of early seafaring visits to the Shark Bay region by European explorers. Englishman William Dampier named Shark Bay on his second voyage of exploration to Australia in 1699 - although he may have mistaken the local dolphins for sharks! Dirk Hartog’s landing at Cape Inscription (Dirk Hartog Island) in 1616 was the first recorded visit by any European in western Australia. He marked his discovery with an inscribed pewter plate nailed to a post - the original plate is now kept in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Nicolas Baudin and Louis de Freycinet both led expeditions to the area. Francois Peron was a French naturalist/zoologist aboard Baudin’s scientific expeditions in 1801 and 1803. Many of Shark Bay’s islands and landmarks are named after the explorers on these expeditions.

Unique Location & Natural Features

Shark Bay is a truly remarkable place. Flooded by rising sea levels about 8,000 years ago, it is located on the Indian Ocean coast (Gascoyne Region) about 850 kms north of Perth - at the most westerly point (Steep Point) of the Australian continent. Covering 2.2 million hectares, the heritage area is almost 70% marine in nature.

Shark Bay’s surrounds contain a sizable peninsula, several fairly large islands, beaches, salt pans and mud flats. Aboriginal midden sites on Peron Peninsula and Dirk Hartog Island are evidence of early indigenous occupation. On Peron Peninsula in particular, there are a series of shell middens stretching along the rusty red dunes.

Surrounded by colourful and diverse landscapes, the area today has three exceptional natural features: its vast seagrass beds, its dugong (sea cow) population, and its stromatolites (living fossils, the oldest forms of life on earth). Shark Bay region is also home to five species of endangered mammals, 98 different reptiles and amphibians including the ‘thorny devil’ (a lizard), and more than 230 species of birds.

Outstanding Natural Beauty

The profusion of Shark Bay peninsulas, islands and bays create a diversity of landscapes, and exceptional coastal scenery. There’s more than 1,500 kms of meandering coastline, with about 300 kms of limestone cliffs overlooking the bay. Exceptional coastal scenery exists at Zuytdorp Cliffs, Dirk Hartog Island, Peron Peninsula, Heirisson and Bellefin Prongs (long narrow peninsulas that jut into the Bay) - and wide sweeping shell beaches at L’haridon Bight.

Shell Beach is about 70 kms long and 10 metres deep in white cockle shells. The shells were once used to build the walls of buildings in the area - St Andrews Church, the Old Pearler Restaurant, and several station homesteads.

A Rare Australian Wildlife Haven

There are few places in the world where you can experience marine wonders in the ways you can at Shark Bay. It’s home to prolific aquatic wildlife which includes dolphins, dugongs, manta rays and turtles. The bay supports a profusion of prawns, scallops, sea-snakes and sharks, sponge gardens, and a unique mix of tropical and temperate fish species. Shark Bay is the world’s most securely protected stronghold for dugong. Some 11,000 dugong live in the bay - around 12.5% of the world’s dugong population, the largest concentration in the world.

There are some 17 species of mammals in the area, including humpback whales. Humpback and Southern Right whales use the bay as a staging post in their annual migration along the coast. There used to be as many as 20,000, but past exploitation severely reduced numbers - today there are an estimated 3,000. As many as 1,000 humpback whales per season were taken by Norwegian commercial whaling around the 1930s.

Monkey Mia (a resort site) is popularly known for its small pod of wild but friendly bottlenose dolphins that live in the bay. Usually three times a day, they ritually swim to shore and interact with people - fed by hand from the beach. It has been happening for about 40 years. The process of feeding them commenced in the early 1960s, when a Mrs Watts started feeding the wild dolphins that followed her husband’s fishing boat to the shores at Monkey Mia.

Some of the dolphins in the bay also exhibit one of the few known cases of ‘tool use’ in marine mammals (also a feature with sea otters). The dolphins protect their nose with a sponge as they forage for food on the sandy bottom.

Dirk Hartog Island is WA’s most important nesting site for loggerhead turtles, even though it is close to their southern limit. Both green and loggerhead turtles nest on several beaches of the Island, and on Peron Peninsula. Large numbers of sharks and rays frequent Shark Bay’s saline waters - manta rays are now considered globally threatened. Huge whale sharks (world’s largest fish) gather in the bay during the April and May full-moons. The waters around Francois Peron National Park are quite famous for their hydroplaning dolphins, a very unusual technique for catching fish.

Vitally Important Seagrass Meadows

The seagrass meadows of Shark Bay cover over 4,000 sq kms of the bay - the world’s largest known area of seagrass. Seagrasses are aquatic flowering plants that form ‘meadows’ in warm brackish marine waters - producing one of the world’s most productive aquatic eco-systems. Wooramel Seagrass Bank is the largest seagrass meadow in the world, with the highest species diversity (12 species) in any one place.

Seagrasses are the basis of the food chain in Shark Bay, attracting the massive dugong population. Producing around 8-million tonnes of leaf material each year, the Shark Bay seagrass meadows also provide food and refuge for a diversity of other marine creatures - for prawns, turtles, sharks, rays, and fish.

Over thousands of years, sediment and shell fragments have accumulated in the seagrasses and raised the Shark Bay sea floor, making the bay shallower - average depth is just 9 metres. This has therefore contributed significantly to the development of some major marine features in the bay, such as the Faure Sill - a sandbar that crosses the eastern gulf of Shark Bay from Peron Peninsula to the mainland. This sandbar is responsible for creating the vast saline shallows that support Hamelin Pool and the famous stromatolites.

Complex Climatic Conditions & Effects

In Shark Bay’s hot dry climate, evaporation greatly exceeds annual rainfall. Seawater in the shallow bays becomes very salt-concentrated. Seagrasses restrict the tidal flow, preventing the ocean tides from diluting the seawater - therefore the water in the bay is almost twice as salty as the Indian Ocean waters. Low rainfall, high evaporation and low tidal flushing have produced the highly saline conditions of Hamelin Pool and L’haridon Bight.

Shark Bay region is a meeting point of three major climatic zones (tropical, desert and temperate), which means that plants and animals adapted to all three can be found here. Significant natural habitats exist around Shark Bay where endangered plant and animal species are able to survive in relative isolation. Several wildlife species are unique, and even considered new to science.

A number of plant and bird species are at the limit of their range, including 25% of the area’s vascular plants, and at least four of the bird species. Wild populations of five of Australia’s 26 endangered mammals exist on Bernier and Dorre Islands in the northwest of the bay - four of these mammals occur nowhere else in the wild. This is one of the last remaining habitats of two varieties of Australian hare-wallabies, which are threatened with extinction.

Sea turtles are studied at Faure Island (off Monkey Mia), as the turtles seasonally come to nest. Shark Bay area is home to three endemic sand-swimming skinks, the sandhill frog, a third of Australia’s dragon lizard species, and about 35% of Australian bird species. Dirk Hartog National Park is a haven for rare burrowing frogs and white fairy wrens.

Francois Person National Park

The ocean shouldn’t be touching the desert, but in Francois Peron National Park, this is exactly what happens - dramatic rust red desert sands meet white sandy beaches and azure blue water. Peron Peninsula divides the bay. Red sand wilderness is fringed by shallow lagoons known for their outstanding beauty. The National Park remains wild and pristine, and just a 10-minute drive from Denham. Spectacular land and seascapes are guaranteed.

Cape Peron is at the most northern tip of the National Park. Little Lagoon is a natural swimming pool full of fish, just five kilometres from Denham, and a nursery for crabs and whiting. Big Lagoon, the largest tidal inlet in Shark Bay, is home to dugongs, dolphins and green turtles. The lagoon’s mangroves and seagrass beds are an important fish and crustacean nursery.

Peron Homestead is the centre of an important historic precinct, The property was a working sheep station until 1990 - now offering a self-guided walk through the shearing sheds, shearers quarters and stock yards, providing a glimpse of life from the 1950s. Today, the property is one of the most important wilderness areas in Australia - home to rare and endangered species. A small interpretative centre presents stories of indigenous inhabitants, western colonisation and the current Project Eden conservation program. Visitors can soak in 44-degree hot artesian waters (the ‘hot tub’), that once supplied vital water for stock on the former Peron Station.

Project Eden protects some of Australia’s most vulnerable marsupials - like the once locally extinct greater bilbies. Vulnerable mammal populations are being bred by Project Eden, and then reintroduced onto safe havens at Salutation and Dirk Hartog Islands - rufous and banded hare-wallabies, the western barred bandicoot, and Shark Bay mouse have all disappeared from the wild since European settlement. A two-metre-high fence now runs 3.4 kms across the peninsula’s narrow isthmus to afford the sanctuary some integrity and immunity.

A 1.5 km walk between Cape Peron and Skipjack Point (the Wanamalu Trail) provides excellent views of the coastline from viewing platforms high above the bright blue bays. You get to look down onto abundant marine life, including dugong, manta rays, turtles and sharks swimming close to shore in the water below. This is also a top fishing spot in the bay.

World-Famous Stromatolites

Stromatolites are one of the very earliest signs of life on earth - colonies of blue-green algae that form hard dome-shaped structures/deposits. Fossilised stromatolites (dated at 3.5 billion years old) have been found at Marble Bar WA, inland from Shark Bay. For about a thousand years, living stromatolite species have been building in Hamelin Pool. Today’s stromatolites at Hamelin Pool are modern equivalents of these life-forms which lived some 3,500 million years ago.

There are only two significant ‘living’ stromatolite sites in the world - the tranquil Hamelin Pool in Shark Bay, and the Bahamas in the Caribbean. Hamelin Pool stromatolites are an extremely important world heritage. The most diverse and numerous stromatolite examples in the world, they are the planet’s oldest and largest ‘living fossils’. A 200-metre boardwalk at Hamelin Pool leads visitors over the calm waters to view these amazing examples of earth’s evolution.

Isolated & Off-The-Beaten Track, But Very Unique

The eco-systems in Shark Bay are relatively unaltered by human impact. The only town in the region is Denham, a two-hour flight from Perth. The region has not seen any real development, due to the lack of fresh water. While in Denham, discover the broad-picture of the area’s treasures by visiting the Shark Bay World Heritage Discovery Centre. With interactive displays, historic and contemporary film footage, and objects of rare historic and scientific significance, the Discovery Centre showcases the natural wonders and unique habitats of the region.

Best time to visit is between April and October, when wildflowers transform the landscape. Tropical cyclones can occur sometimes between November and April. Extended tours are available from Perth to the area, and day or half-day adventures from Denham. Denham is small (pop about 600), but has all the required facilities - shops and accommodation options etc. Explore the Francois Peron National Park on a 4WD eco-tour, or rent a 4WD for the day from Denham. Regional Express Air fly Perth to Shark Bay airport daily, and Skippers Aviation fly to Monkey Mia, 4 days a week.

If you would like to visit Shark Bay or combine it with a trip to Western Australia, please contact us today on

1800 672 988.

All images on this blog page are courtesy of Tourism Western Australia.

Shark Bay World Heritage Area