Located one and half-hours drive north of Brisbane, Noosa sits on the shores of Laguna Bay. Still surrounded by bushland and national parks, development at Noosa is low key, fitting into the environment, rather than over whelming it.
Visitors to Noosa have a range of ac
tivities to enjoy,
however we were only interested in her underwater delights.There are two dive shops in the Noosa area, both of which are located at the Marina complex on the picturesque Noosa River at Tewantin, one of the outer suburbs of Noosa. We choose to dive with Resort 2 Diving, owned and operated by Gary and Ladia Westland. They have very friendly and helpful staff, and excellent facilities, with the dive boat located right in front of the shop.
The Noosa bar, at the entrance of the river, dictates diving at Noosa. Crossing the bar is best made at high tide, which saw us getting an early start, meeting at the dive shop at 6am. After loading our dive and camera gear, we were provided with a safety briefing on the boat and the diving, before setting off down the Noosa River.
The crew made the crossing of the Noosa bar look easy, and were soon heading across Laguna Bay. With a group of experienced divers on board, the crew decided to dive Sunshine Reef, one of the deeper reefs off Noosa.
In no time at all we were anchored at the site. This is one of the best features of diving Noosa, all of the dive sites are close to shore, so no long boat trips for those who get sea sick.
Once anchored, we were rocking around a little, due to the rolling swell, but with little wind and spectacular blue water everyone was eager to get into the water. Entering the water with a giant stride, we found the visibility to be over 20m, and water wonderfully warm at 22 degrees. Descending the anchor line we could just see the bottom, 26m below us.
Unfortunately, once on the bottom the viz was only 12m, still stirred up from the huge seas that had been hitting the coast only days before. Looking around, fish were everywhere. A school of sweetlip drifted by, angelfish were darting over the reef and a large
coral trout swam
toward us for a closer look.The rocky terrain at Sunshine Reef varies from 23m to 33m. We were diving on a part of the reef with rocky walls and gutters. All around us were large swaying sea whips, each hosting a family of sea whip gobies. The colours of the reef were amazing, with red and purple spiky soft corals, yellow and red patches of gorgonians and green and brown hard corals.
We spotted the first nudies right next to the anchor, a couple of snaky bornella, which are very common on the Sunshine Coast, but rare elsewhere. During the dive we spotted over fifty nudibranchs, including Elizabeth’s chromodoris, black margined glossodoris, obscure hypselodoris, tiled hypselodoris, celestial phyllidia and lots of pustulose phyllidiella (all identified from Neville Coleman’s comprehensive book 1001 NUDIBRANCHS - www.nevillecoleman.com.au). Everywhere we looked there were nudies, however, the highlight was a cluster of four rare red-girdled glossodoris.
During the dive we moved no more than 50m from the anchor and also saw red emperors, surgeonfish, lionfish, anemonefish, estuary cod, painted crayfish and a slipper cray.
Between dives we headed back into the calm sheltered waters of Laguna Bay to enjoy morning tea and the warm sunshine.
Our second dive was at Jew Shoal, a large reef, about five hectares in size, just north of Noosa Head. The crew anchored us on the most popular dive site at Jew Shoal, The Pinnacle.
Unfortunately, the visibility was only around 6m. The rocky terrain at The Pinnacle is dominated by two large bommies that rise to 6m and 11m. Surrounding them are ridges, gutters and walls that drop to the sand at 18m.
The bottom here is covered in hard and soft corals and abounds with invertebrate species. Crabs, shrimps, octopus, sea stars, brittle stars, urchins, feather stars and of course nudibranchs live amongst the coral. With the limited visibility it was a good dive to just stick your bum up and head down and look for colourful sea slugs, and we were not disappointed. We saw most of the species we had seen on Sunshine Reef, plus a few more, including lemon notodoris and the undescribed spot margined chromodoris, which is only known from the Sunshine Coast area. We must have seen close to 100 nudibranchs during our hour-long dive.
The fish life at The Pinnacle was also very good, but we missed most of it in our search to find nudies.
The next day we were again out at The Pinnacle, this time clean water had pushed into Laguna Bay, the visibility around 12m. We decided to follow Brendan, one of Resort 2 Diving’s Divemasters, as he was hoping to find the resident tawny nurse shark that lives in the area. At the start of the dive we were surrounded by a massive school of yellowtail and silver batfish that were circling the top of the bommie.
Following Brendan on a circuit around the bommies, he spent most of the time sticking his head into every nook and cranny looking for the tawny nurse shark. The shark proved to be elusive, but we did see ornate and spotted wobbegongs, lionfish, painted crayfish, catfish and an olive sea snake. The population of reef fish was also impressive, with several species of angelfish, including scribbled, bicolour and lemon yellow Herald’s.
We spent the last ten minutes of the dive swimming with schools of yellowtail and silver batfish, watching them part when a squadron of kingfish cruised through and drop to the bottom when a Spanish mackerel swam by. We also saw so many nudibranchs on this dive that we were starting to ignore the common ones and only concentrate on the unusual.
Our last dive of the weekend was on another part of Jew Shoal called Chas’s, after our skipper. This site is a maze of ridges and gutters in 12 to 22m, so we elected to follow Shane, another of Resort 2 Diving’s Divemasters, to avoid getting lost. The coral growth here is quite superb, with lovely hard and soft corals, gorgonians, sponges and sea whips.
Once more nudibranchs were the highlight and we found many more beautiful red-girdled glossodoris. In the 12m visibility, we also observed a wonderful variety of reef fish and several moray eels hiding amongst the rocks. One of the features of the dive was a huge black-blotched stingray resting on the sand. We got very close to this giant ray before it slowly lifted off the bottom and swam off. At the end of the dive we stumbled across the smallest reef stonefish we had ever seen, only about 5cm long.
Our weekend at Noosa was a wonderful experience filled with great diving. We will be back to explore more of Noosa to see all the resident creatures that we missed seeing, like turtles, leopard sharks, gropers, manta rays and that elusive tawny nurse shark. And hopefully many more species of nudibranchs.