Swansea Bridge

There are several ways in: the fishing pontoon, the weigh station, the boat ramp, a concrete ledge or Blackneds Bay, with exits at Blackneds Bay, the ledge or the ramp. On the standard slack-water dive you enter and drop to around 6 to 8 m, where the first thing you find is the return marker, a heap of scuttled shopping trolleys and pushbikes. From there you work the bridge structure span by span, or head out to the artificial reef at 18 m.

Each span holds its own colony. Decorator crabs, pineapple fish, large blue eels and fan-bellied leatherjackets live on the pylons, with nudibranchs in more colours than you will manage to count, and the channel also turns up moray eels, seahorses, stripey fish, yellowtail and catfish eels. On the bottom look for bull rays, stingrays and numb rays. Night diving here is a good experience when the current is slack, and the same marker heap guides you back to the exit.

For the more adventurous there is a drift on the incoming tide, which Central Coast Divers calls a great bonus. Enter near the RSL club and let the flood carry you under the spans and all the way in to the western boat ramp, watching the pylons and their colonies pass rather than swimming between them. It is a one-way dive, so the exit at the western ramp is fixed before you get in, and the same tide that carries you is the reason the pylon dive and the night dive are kept for slack water.