Australia: Day 75 - WA - Manta Rays or not

I woke up a little before 6 as usual and met some others who had gotten up early for a racing pidgeon release - so I figured I would tag along. It wasn't as many birds as I expected but it still looked cool. After brekkie about 15 or so of us headed over to the shop where would be taking the Manta Ray tour from. The weather wasn't cooperating and it was chilly but they loaded us up on the boat just the same. We spent several hours looking for rays and the spotter plane ( a little plane that flys around the area searching for rays) gave us some false reports. Just so everyone is on the same page - Manta Rays are huge rays, up to 7 m across, closer to 3-4m on avg, and are filter feeders. They do not have a barb and therefore are reatively safe to swim with. Unfortunately at about 11 or so the spotter plane retired and the crew sent us on a drift snorkel followed by a free snorkel on the outer reef. I was super disappointed, but there isn't much I could do about it. The tour company gave us coupons for a free tour - but what good does that do me? :o( Anyway I saw another turtle on the outer reef and a giant lobster creature of some kind. We also got close to some humpback whales (which was pretty cool, one even swam under the boat!!) and a mess of dolphins. So the day wasn't a waste but I was still bummed. Upon return about 2pm, I headed to the beach for lunch and then the bakery for dessert with some friends. Victoria and I rounded up a 3rd volunteer, Wendy (China) (you need at least 3 people to snorkel off the beach) and headed back to the beach. The wind had created a drift current so we just made two drifts since we could no longer swim against it - the wind also made it freezing! We saw an awesome ray species in the shallows that was close to 5 feet in length with was pretty cool. After a hot shower we all cooked out on the 'barbie' (BBQ) for dinner and ended the evening with some milkshakes - yum. We decided to sleep inside the tent.