MELBOURNE ’S PIER PLEASURES

Melbourne has some of the keenest divers in Australia . Each weekend sees hundreds of local divers heading out on boats to explore spectacular wrecks and very colourful temperate reefs. But many more divers can be found shore diving in Port Phillip Bay, exploring Melbourne ’s brilliant piers.
    Melbourne ’s Port Phillip Bay is one of the most unique bays in the world. The bay contains a massive body of water that funnels through a small mouth, known as ‘The Rip’, which has claimed numerous ships. This huge movement of water in and out of the bay creates very strong currents and allows a rich mixture of marine life to thrive in the bay. Port Phillip bay is dotted with piers all around its length, but the best ones to dive are found on the Mornington Peninsula , about an hour and a half drive from Melbourne city. On a recent visit to Melbourne I had the chance to explore four of these magic piers.
    The closest to Melbourne is Mornington Pier, which is an average day dive, but ‘ Cephalopod City ’ by night, which is when I dived it. A 2m jump into the water was a spectacular start to this dive, where we explored colourful pier pylons in depths to 7m. During the dive we found several big-bellied seahorses, shrimps, globefish, goatfish, cardinalfish, scorpionfish and dragonets. Sea stars were everywhere, a feature of Melbourne diving, especially huge eleven-arm sea stars. But as mentioned earlier Mornington Pier is well known for its cephalopods, and I wasn’t disappointed. I found a giant cuttlefish under a ledge and several highly venomous southern blue-ringed octopus strolling around the reef looking for prey. But the highlight was a rare southern white-spot octopus, which is endemic to this region. The other divers in our group also found a school of squid and a huge Maori octopus.
    Heading south the next pier I experienced was Rye Pier. The clean sandy bottom around Rye Pier is often a good place to see small stingarees, huge smooth stingrays and angel sharks, which emerge from under a layer of sand to feed at night. Going no deeper than 5m we had a lot of fun exploring the colourful pylons at Rye .
    Big-bellied seahorses were particularly common, and I found a dozen under the pier. Crabs, shrimps and sea stars were also encountered and in large numbers. Abundant fish reside under the pier, including flatheads, leatherjackets, morwongs and wrasse, which attracted the attentions of a shag. It was quite a sight watching this bird swimming underwater between the pylons looking for a meal.
    The highlight of the dive at Rye Pier was being joined by a juvenile Australian fur seal. This cute seal is one of dozens that live in the bay, and this one has decided that Rye Pier is a good home and has been seen around the pier for months. It was just laying on the surface right in front of us, peering into our camera lens and occasionally swimming around us. After a few minutes the seal got bored with us and climbed onto the pier to sunbake.
    The most distant pier from Melbourne is at Portsea and its unique attraction are weedy sea dragons. A nearby kelp covered reef is the best place to encounter the dragons, but they are also common under the pier. Going no deeper than 6m we had a lovely dive under Portsea Pier finding magpie morwong, leatherjackets, sea stars, crabs, hermit crabs, nudibranchs and brittle stars. A pretty Forster’s weedfish kept us entertained for a while as it fed on a group of shrimps, but a highlight was a close encounter with the resident smooth stingray, this massive ray, 2m wide, was gliding amongst the pylons.
    Halfway between Portsea and Rye is Melbourne ’s newest pier and hottest dive site, Blairgowrie Pier. This pier was only constructed a decade ago, but has become a magnet for marine life, and divers. The pylons under the pier are completely covered in colourful sponges, ascidians, algae and kelp and home to shrimps, crabs, sea stars, tube worms, scallops and nudibranchs.
    Big-bellied seahorses seem to be everywhere under the pier and come in a range of colours, yellows, creams, oranges and browns, so you can pick and choose the most colourful one to photograph. I also found myself on the sand looking for interesting critters and wasn’t disappointed, finding a southern blue-ringed octopus, spotted stingarees, a pipefish, large spider crabs, dragonets, flatheads and a rare southern keeled octopus. The best find on the sand was an eastern stargazer, all I could see of this bizarre fish were two sand coloured eyes and a wide grinning mouth.
    The fish life in and around the pier was brilliant, leatherjackets, wrasse, zebrafish, trevally, yellowtail, globefish and even a kingfish. One of my favourite residents are the Shaw’s cowfish, not only are they colourful but have the cutest face, with lips that look like they are always puckered for kissing. One of the main attractions at Blairgowrie Pier is a rare endemic fish, the tasselled anglerfish. Only found in southern Australia , a number of tasselled anglerfish are said to reside on the pylons at Blairgowrie, and reaching 20cm in length you would think they would be easy to find. But the tasselled anglerfish has the most elaborate camouflage of almost any fish and blends in perfectly with the sponges and algae. I thought my chances of finding one of these fish would be pretty remote, but after searching several dozen pylons I stumbled upon a large piece of algae that also had an eye. I then spend the next twenty minutes studying and photographing this unique fish, which would have to be the most amazing anglerfish I have ever seen.
    Melbourne ’s piers can be dived year round and are diveable under almost any conditions. Summer and autumn are generally the best time to dive these piers, not only because the water is warmer, but also the warmer temperature sees an influx of marine life. Water temperature in Port Phillip Bay varies from 20C degrees to a chilly 8C degrees, while the visibility averages 6m to 10m, but can be over 15m at times.
    Diving Melbourne ’s piers is memorable experience where you will encounter a variety of rare and unique Aussie critters.

Article appeared in Dive Pacific No.122 Feb/Mar 2011