Scuba Diving in Australia – The Best Dive Sites!

There are many places to scuba dive in Australia but the top highlights can be broken into 4 main regions to simplify. Please note if you dig deeper there are even more places to dive like inland lakes, underground aquifers and more. But for the purposes of highlighting the best places for scuba diving please see the 4 regions below:

1. The Great Barrier Reef - located on the North East Coast of Queensland.
2. The Central Coast - of Maloolabah, Byron Bay, South West Rocks, Port Macquarie, and Sydney.
3. The Great Ocean Road, in and around Melbourne.
4. Western Australia - Ningaloo Reef

At the top of the list and the most famous place for scuba diving in Australia is the Great Barrier Reef. As the largest reef system on Earth, the Great Barrier Reef has drawn scuba divers and snorkelers from all over the world for decades.

The Great Barrier Reef offers spectacular scuba diving on deep coral walls teeming with life to giant coral bays and shallow coral gardens. You will find deep bommies, swim through caverns, caves and a large array of marine animals. Not to mention over 600 species of soft and hard corals.

Scuba Divers can expect to find many species of marine life, including sea turtles, giant clams, white tip and black tip reefs sharks, grey whaler reef sharks, giant mauri wrasse, schooling barracuda, queenfish, giant trevally, cuttlefish, moray eels, flame file shells, octopus, lionfish, glassfish, wobbegong reef sharks, parrotfish and sometimes whale sharks and manta rays. (Manta Rays tend to be found on Southern Part of The Great Barrier Reef around places like Lady Elliot Island).

The water temperatures are warm, ranging from around 22 to 29 degrees Celsius, and this offers all year round scuba diving. For an in-depth guide check out our month by month guide for diving the Great Barrier Reef.

As the largest reef system on planet Earth, the Great Barrier Reef stretches more than 2800klm. It is made up of hundreds of smaller reefs offering amazing bio-diversity and marine life.

The three main ways to scuba dive the Great Barrier Reef are listed below:

What are the highlights?

The highlights of diving in Australia are absolutely diving the Great Barrier Reef. The southern parts of Australia do offer some unique diving experiences like cave diving with Grey Nurse sharks at South West Rocks and Ningaloo Reef in Western Australia. But diving on the Great Barrier Reef is regarded as the real gem of diving in Australia.

Where are the best dive sites found?

The best dive sites are found on the Great Barrier Reef teaming with life, superb coral and large schools of fish. Here is a list of the top 10 dives sites on the Great Barrier Reef.

1. Osprey Reef Shark Dive at the North Horn Dive Site.
2. Holmes Reef located East of Cairns in the Coral Sea.
3. Steve's Bommie, Ribbon Reef Number 10.
4. The Cod Hole, Northern Ribbon Reefs Lizard Island.
5. Yongalla Ship Wreck (Alva Beach).
6. Three Sisters, Milln Reef Cairns.
7. Lighthouse Bommie (Dwarf Minke Whale Encounters)
8. Pixie Pinnacle Dive Site Ribbon Reef 9.
9. Whale Bommie Milln Reef.
10. Barracuda Bommie, Agincourt Reef 2, Port Douglas.

What can you expect to see diving in Australia?

If we talk about the best place to scuba dive in Australia, nearly all signs point to the Great Barrier Reef. Diving on the Great Barrier Reef you can expect to see a large array of marine species teaming with life. Expect to find tiny nudibranchs, seahorses, and shrimps to large grey whaler reef sharks, giant mauri wrasse reef fish, schooling giant trevally, queenfish and sea turtles of all species. The Great Barrier Reef is made up of hundreds of different species of soft and hard corals. Giant Gorgonian red sea fans, Sea Whips, Sponges, Anenome's, Bolder Corals, Brain Corals and much more.