Ningaloo Marine Park is closed. Cape Range National Park is closed. Learmonth Airport is not accepting commercial flights. Cyclone Narelle made its WA landfall just before Easter, right at the start of Exmouth's high season. It tracked directly along the full length of the World Heritage reef that draws divers and snorkellers from around the country. The park closures carry no announced end date. For the fishing charter operators, dive companies, and whale shark tour businesses that rely on the Easter-to-October season to sustain themselves through the year, the situation is serious.

The reef was not in good shape before Narelle arrived. AIMS researchers who returned to the northern lagoon of Ningaloo Reef in October 2025, six months after the heatwave bleaching event, and found that between 52% and 71% of corals had died across eight surveyed sites, with an average mortality of approximately 61%, according to results published by AIMS. Of roughly 1,600 individual corals counted during active bleaching in March 2025, only about 600 were alive by October. The colonies that were most affected were branching corals, particularly staghorn and thin birdsnest corals, which had previously dominated shallow lagoon habitat at tourist sites including Turquoise Bay.

The same heat that fuelled the bleaching fuelled the cyclone

Here is the connection that most reporting has not made explicit: the elevated sea surface temperatures that drove the 2025 bleaching event did not disappear after the heatwave. The eastern Indian Ocean off WA remained anomalously warm through late 2025 and into the 2026 cyclone season. When Narelle re-entered the Indian Ocean after its Northern Territory crossing in late March, it found water well above the 26°C threshold needed to sustain tropical intensity, and that water was warm precisely because the same persistent heat anomaly that had bleached the reef was still present. According to BOM tropical climate monitoring, the late-season monsoon trough remained unusually active and positioned south of its climatological average through March 2026, providing the low-level atmospheric convergence that allowed Narelle to rebuild after crossing land. The reef was not hit by two unrelated events. It was hit by two expressions of the same underlying ocean heat anomaly: one killed the coral slowly over months, and the other arrived in a single night.

AIMS Senior Research Scientist Dr. James Gilmour described the broader pattern in a statement following the 2025 bleaching surveys: "This huge WA bleaching event comes at a concerning time for coral reefs in Australia. It was synchronised with another mass bleaching event on the Great Barrier Reef and is part of the ongoing fourth Global Coral Bleaching Event, which began in 2023. Climate change is driving these events, which are becoming more frequent, more intense and more widespread, giving our amazing, valuable coral reefs little time to recover." Narelle is evidence that the recovery window has already been interrupted.

Narelle's path along Ningaloo

Narelle made its Gascoyne landfall just south of Coral Bay at approximately 09:30 AWST on 27 March, having already recorded gusts around 200 km/h (108 knots) at the Learmonth automatic weather station as the system passed the North West Cape. The very destructive wind core, carrying gusts up to 195 km/h (105 knots) at landfall, travelled along rather than across the reef, meaning the physical wave action and storm surge generated by the cyclone affected Ningaloo along its entire 260-kilometre length rather than striking a single section. Coral reefs already compromised by bleaching are known to suffer worse physical damage from cyclone swell because the structural complexity of the reef, specifically the branching and plating corals that absorb wave energy, has already been reduced. The Ningaloo of March 2026 was not the reef that deflected previous cyclones.

"The town has fundamentally changed. It was definitely a harrowing night there for a lot of people." — Craig Kitson, Exmouth resident, as quoted by AAP

Exmouth itself is still in the early stages of clean-up. Emergency Services Commissioner Darren Klemm told reporters that recovery was likely to take weeks, not days. About 1,400 properties remained without power as of 29 March, according to figures cited by multiple news outlets. Four structures have been confirmed destroyed and 27 damaged, with more than 2,000 homes still under assessment. The Federal Government has activated a $10 million initial relief package, and 200 DFES personnel and Red Cross volunteers have been deployed to the region. The Premier's Relief Payment program is making payments of $4,000 available for severely damaged or destroyed properties and $2,000 for partial damage.

What's open, what's still closed

As of 1 April, the following national parks remain closed: Ningaloo Marine Park (Nyinggulara), Cape Range National Park, Depot Hill Nature Reserve, Kennedy Range, and Dirk Hartog Island, according to Australia's Coral Coast. No reopening dates have been published for these sites while damage assessments continue. Francois Peron National Park, Coalseam Conservation Park, and Stockyard Gully Reserve reopened on 31 March.

On roads: North West Coastal Highway from Blowholes Road to Nanutarra Roadhouse remains closed. Minilya–Exmouth Road from the highway intersection to Exmouth is closed. Coral Bay Road from Minilya–Exmouth Road to Coral Bay is closed. The road north to Karratha reopened to four-wheel-drive vehicles on 30 March; 65 tourists were bused to Karratha on that day and flown out from there.

On air: Learmonth Airport remains closed due to damage to the runway and terminal facilities. Qantas has a formal disruption policy covering affected Learmonth departures through 6 April, which is the clearest official signal available of the expected minimum closure period. No commercial services are operating.

What this means for divers, fishers, and charter operators

The practical situation for anyone with Exmouth bookings or plans to dive Ningaloo this month is straightforward: there is currently no legal way to access the reef. Ningaloo Marine Park, which covers the water column and reef itself, is closed. Cape Range National Park, which provides the majority of coastal access points including Turquoise Bay, the Mandu Mandu Gorge launch, and the Oyster Stacks, the most popular snorkel and shore-dive sites on the coast, is also closed. Charter vessels operating from Exmouth would need park permits and launch facilities that are currently unavailable regardless of their own operational status.

For fishing charter operators, the closure layered on top of the Easter timing represents a compounding economic hit. Easter weekend through April traditionally marks the beginning of Exmouth's high season, the period that small operators rely on to build the cash reserves that sustain them through the quieter summer months. The Sweeter Banana Co-operative in Carnarvon reported 50–80% of crops affected by Narelle, according to DFES Commissioner Klemm, suggesting the wider Gascoyne economy is under pressure simultaneously. Offshore pelagic fishing in the water north of Cape Range is not covered by the national park closure, but the access road situation and the lack of air arrivals means the client base is not getting in regardless. Charter operators should monitor the Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions updates directly for park reopening.

Divers face the additional layer of uncertainty about what they will find when access is restored. Pre-Narelle, the northern Ningaloo lagoon had already lost the majority of its shallow-water branching coral structure from the 2025 bleaching. The sites most visible from the surface at Turquoise Bay, the Oyster Stacks, and the Tantabiddi area were already documenting high mortality. Post-Narelle, the physical swell and storm surge will have displaced coral rubble and altered the seabed at affected sites. AIMS has not yet announced a post-cyclone survey program for Ningaloo. Divers planning a future trip should set realistic expectations: Ningaloo's offshore reef structure, the outer slopes and the deeper channel, may have fared better than the shallow lagoon, but the conditions that made the northern lagoon the most accessible dive and snorkel destination on the coast have been severely disrupted. Check Seabreeze warnings for any ongoing coastal hazard notices affecting the WA northwest coast.

Questions

When will Ningaloo Marine Park reopen? No date has been announced. The Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions is conducting damage assessments before any decisions are made. Francois Peron reopened 31 March, suggesting smaller parks with less damage can move quickly, but Ningaloo and Cape Range are a different scale of assessment.

Can boats still fish offshore from Exmouth? The national park closure covers the marine park waters. Road access to launch sites remains restricted. Air access remains closed. In practical terms, offshore recreational fishing from Exmouth is not currently viable until the park and access situation normalises.

Was any Ningaloo coral confirmed damaged by the cyclone? No post-cyclone surveys have been published as of 1 April. Physical damage to the reef structure is likely given the storm's track and intensity, but the extent will not be known until AIMS and park managers can access and survey the sites. The pre-existing bleaching mortality means that baseline surveys will need to distinguish new storm damage from existing dead coral structure.

What about whale shark season? The Ningaloo whale shark season typically runs from March through July. The Easter opening of the season is the most commercially significant week for operators. With Ningaloo Marine Park closed and no flight access to Exmouth, the whale shark season's first month is effectively cancelled. The season itself will not be lost if conditions normalise by May, but the damage to Easter trade cannot be recovered.

For the latest access and marine conditions for the WA northwest coast, including any revised warnings or forecasts as the recovery progresses, check Seabreeze marine forecasts.