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The Great Barrier Reef is a SCUBA divers dream. But which sites should you dive? Expedition Drenched rounds up our top 4 Great Barrier Reef dive sites.
Only one living structure on the planet is so big that it can be seen from space. The Great Barrier Reef is roughly 2,000km from top to bottom and covers an area of 350,000 square kilometers. It’s HUGE. And you can find it in Queensland, Australia.
The Expedition Drenched crew was lucky enough to visit this spectacular area of the world during our second season, and we loved every moment. The beautiful turquoise water, stunning water clarity, unparalleled views, and abundant marine life left us with memories that we will never forget.
So this week, we thought we’d do a round-up of our favorite dive sites on the Great Barrier Reef in Queensland, Australia.
We did some diving on sites towards the center of the Great Barrier Reef and we also ventured out to visit the northern Ribbon Reefs that fringe the continental shelf and are just out of reach for day trips and charters from the mainland. Each of our 4 choices will give you a different dive experience – tuna and sharks at Steve’s Bommie will blow your mind and the underwater museum right beside John Brewer Reef will make you feel like you’re inside an underwater science lab.
However, the water around Queensland isn’t just for SCUBA divers. If you’re not someone who likes to strap on a tank of breathing gas and swim around underwater, the Whitsundays is a stunningly perfect place to experience the classic beauty for which Queensland and the Great Barrier Reef are famously known.
The northern section of the Great Barrier Reef is the home of the Ribbon Reefs, a chain of 10 individual reefs that fringe the edge of the continental shelf. The Ribbon Reefs are in a fairly remote area of the Great Barrier Reef and are only visited by a few liveaboards. But the turquoise water, huge schools of pelagic fish, and fields of soft anemones weren’t out of reach for the Sylfia. We jumped off her dive deck several times in the Ribbon Reefs, but our dives on Cracker Jack and Steve’s Bommie were definitely our most memorable.
Cracker Jack is one of the top dive sites in the Great Barrier Reef Ribbon Reefs. It’s a huge pinnacle that rises from 35m up to around 10m below the surface. The sides of the pinnacle are littered with immense gorgonian sea fans busy picking their food out of the passing water.
The pinnacle itself is home to all the regular characters – lionfish and huge moray eels – but because of it’s location in the Great Barrier Reef and its depth, it’s also a great place for larger pelagic life. If you turn away from the pinnacle and look out into the blue you’ll probably see large pelagic schools of Jacks, and if you’re really lucky you may also spot a shark or some large, hungry tuna stalking the Jacks.
The shallower part of the pinnacle is full of nooks and crannies that make great homes for mantis shrimp, pipefish, and cleaner shrimp but what will really catch your eye are the schools of glassfish. Since they’re mostly transparent, the large groups of glassfish shine in the sun and make it feel like the whole dive site is covered in glitter.
Steve’s Bommie is a favourite site on the Ribbon Reefs and people will hop on a liveaboard just to pay it a visit. The site is a rock spire that rises from about 25m and almost hits the surface of the water. This is a really cool site because you can drop down to the base and check out the sea fans and hard corals at the bottom, then slowly shallow up as you spiral around the rock tower.
As you make your way back up to the surface, keep your eyes peeled for giant frogfish and stonefish camouflaged against the rocky backdrop. They may be hard to spot, but this site is home to a lot of them so go slow, and use your underwater torch to help make them easier to spot.
Our time in the central area of the Great Barrier Reef had us exploring underwater structures that were less natural than the reefs we usually explore. This part of Great Barrier Reef Marine Park is home to the SS Yongala wreck, often considered the best shipwreck dive site in the world, and the MOUA underwater museum, an hommage to marine conservation efforts.
Your Expedition Drenched crew were some of the first people in the world to be given permission to dive the MOUA Coral Greenhouse underwater museum. We quickly realized that this underwater installation is more than just a piece of art.
The Coral Greenhouse is just what it sounds like – a greenhouse for corals. Inside the greenhouse, there are about 20 concrete scientists hard at work saving the marine environment that surrounds them.
The artist, Jason de Caires Taylor, hopes that his underwater art pieces will encourage more culturally and environmentally aware tourism and help spur a greater understanding of our natural worlds as breathing ecosystems. This is why we loved this dive site so much – you can hear the conversation about marine conservation right there underwater.
The SS Yongala sank over 100 years ago with no recorded survivors, but today it is often considered to be the best intact wreck dive in the world because it’s loaded with marine life.
This is a deeper dive site with the bottom of the wreck sitting in the sand at 33m and the top of the wreck sitting around 15m. It’s also considered a site that should be left to highly experienced divers because there’s often a stiff current washing over the wreck.
The SS Yongala is a protected wreck and it’s prohibited to penetrate the wreck itself. When divers go inside a wreck, the air they exhale can accumulate in pockets that cause corrosion over time. To stop this from happening, the local authorities have banned diving inside the SS Yongala, and we love this decision! There’s so much to see on the outside of the wreck that you won’t miss checking out the inside. Plus, keeping to the outside will ensure that our kids and grandkids will also get to enjoy this stunning Great Barrier Reef dive site.
Each season, the Expedition Drenched crew explores a new area of the ocean and dives new dive sites in the hunt for knowledge and unforgettable experiences. Check out our YouTube channel to learn more about all the places we’ve already been and to follow our latest adventure – sailing over to legendary Lord Howe Island between Australia and New Zealand. Once the trip is over, we’ll put together our list of favourite Expedition Drenched Season 3 dive sites so that you know exactly where you should dip your fins into the water.
Happy adventuring, and happy bubbles!
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