For those who haven’t dived North Stradbroke Island, or ‘Straddy’ as it is locally known, the north-eastern end of the island is blessed with some of the finest dive sites in Australia, including Flat Rock, Boat Rock, Shag Rock and Manta Bommie. We recently joined Nautilus for one of their first trips to Straddy in August and had a fabulous day of diving.
Nautilus is a 18m long catamaran based at Scarborough, around 45 minutes north of Brisbane city. We arrived at the boat at 7.30am, loaded our dive gear, signed our details onto the log and were soon heading across Moreton Bay. We couldn’t have asked for a better winter’s day, almost no wind, sunny and quite warm. As we crossed the calm waters of the bay we had our boat safety briefing and dive brief, and after setting up our dive gear relaxed in the spacious lounge room.
Travelling at 18 knots, it took over an hour to cross the bay, the crew then had to tackle the notorious Straddy bar. The calm conditions made this look easy, but the crew still had to pick the best course over this shallow sandy bank. We then headed towards Flat Rock and hopefully an encounter with the grey nurse sharks.
Over the winter months critically endangered grey nurse sharks gather at Flat Rock, especially in Shark Alley on the south-eastern tip. After anchoring, and a grey nurse shark dive protocol briefing, we were eager to hit the water, luckily the Nautilus has a large dive deck with plenty of room to gear up. Each diver receives a numbered tag on their BCD before entering the water, this simple system helps the crew keep track of divers in and out of the water.
The dive at Flat Rock was simply stunning with 20m visibility and 19C water temperature. Another group of divers had just been in Shark Alley, which tends to disturb the sharks, so we decided to explore the drop-off first and then end the dive by checking out Shark Alley.
The drop-off is quite spectacular, plummeting from 15m to 28m and decorated with black coral trees, soft corals, gorgonians, tubastra corals and always swarming with reef fish. As we slowly explored the wall we spotted three large small-eye stingrays, then a huge Queensland groper, followed by a black blotched stingray and finally a graceful spotted eagle ray. There are always lots of big animals at Flat Rock, one of the reasons that it is such a great dive site.
By following the drop-off to the east it lead us to the deep end of Shark Alley. Unfortunately, there was only one male 2.2m long grey nurse shark at the deep end of the gutter. We stayed to the side of the gutter to observe the shark, but it was quite nervous and disappeared up the eastern side of the island.
From June to September there are usually six to ten grey nurse in Shark Alley, and if divers stay out of the gutter they will generally stay around. Though divers can disturb the sharks if they encroach on their territory, bubbles do little damage compared to fish hooks. Fortunately, the Queensland Government has protected Flat Rock as a sanctuary zone in an attempt to save these endangered sharks.
Following the coral ridge to the shallow end of the gutter there was unfortunately no more grey nurse sharks in the main gutter, however we did see some wonderful marine life, including a brown spotted rock cod, a cowtail stingray, lots of reef fish and even a Spanish Dancer nudibranch. At the end of dive we did find one more grey nurse that was patrolling one of the side gutters. This 2.4m long male was covered in remoras and an incredible creature to observe.
After a filling lunch, provided as part of the wonderful service on Nautilus, we did a second dive at Shag Rock. Though the visibility was only 10m we still had a nice dive, seeing an abundance of reef fish, wobbegongs, blue spotted stingrays and a variety of invertebrate species. The rocky terrain at Shag Rock varies in depth from 5m to 20m and is a great place for close up photos. The highlight of the dive was two beautiful little cuttlefish that performed for our cameras.
The journey back to Scarborough was spent relaxing in the warm lounge room, reading, writing up logbooks, reviewing and comparing digital photos and enjoying an afternoon tea of fresh fruit and tea cakes.
Nautilus will continue to run regular trips to Straddy dive sites over the summer months, which is a great time to dive Manta Bommie and see leopard sharks, shovelnose rays, stingrays, turtles and of course manta rays.