Christmas Island · Australia · Drift · Reef
Coconut Point
A shallow drift with swirling current and elusive hammerheads
Area photo: David Stanley from Nanaimo, Canada · CC BY 2.0
A drift along the island's edge with the current that makes drifts worth doing. The operator grades it intermediate, runs it between 6 and 16 metres and describes swirling water and the encounters that come with it: gorgonian fans standing out of the reef, eel gardens in the sand and hammerheads for anyone watching the blue.
Where it is and how deep
No published position for this site — the map shows Christmas Island and its other sites; operators know the mooring.
The dive
The site is dived with the water rather than against it, and the current here swirls rather than running clean, which is the first thing the operator says about it. The profile is shallow, 6 to 16 metres, so the whole dive is spent in the bright part of the water column, gliding past the reef rather than working along it under your own power.
What is on the reef stays put: gorgonian fans standing out into the flow, and eel gardens where the bottom turns to sand and the eels come up out of it. Hammerheads are the site's headline animal, but the operator calls them elusive, so they are something to keep an eye out for rather than something to count on. The intermediate grading is about the water rather than the depth, since nothing about 16 metres is demanding but being moved around is.
Marine life and season
- Hammerheads
| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Good | Good | Good | Good | Good | Good | Good | Fair | Fair | Prime | Prime | Prime |
Season follows Christmas Island: October to December brings the clearest water; August and September bring upwellings and lower visibility; from November to April swell can roughen the north side.
Know before you go
- Swirling current is both the point of the dive and its main hazard: stay with the guide and expect the water to change direction rather than run one way.
Sources
- Dive Sites Christmas Island — Extra Divers Australia
- Christmas Island — Wikipedia
More dive sites in Christmas Island
Wreck
A 1942 torpedo casualty, broken in two and dived from 5 m
Reef
Walk-in shore diving with a sheer wall and a garden-eel flat
Shallow coral heads from 3 m with a dense garden-eel colony
A bottomless vertical cliff worked under a 30 m cap
Cave & cavern
A cavern that surfaces in a chamber open to the sky
Reef
Anemones and clownfish in 15 m, with whale sharks passing through
Similar dives elsewhere
A drift from a 4 m bay onto a steep wall, mantas Jan–Apr
A brief, powerful drift where threshers and hammerheads come out of the blue
A drift run deep to 26 m or shallow to 20 m
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Two-tier drift: overhangs at 10-15 m for beginners, 25 m for the experienced