Great Barrier Reef · Australia · Coral garden · Reef
Flynn Reef – Coral Gardens
Terraced coral slope falling away from an 8 m sandy mooring
Area photo: Toby Hudson · CC BY-SA 3.0
Coral Gardens is one of the named moorings on Flynn Reef, an outer-reef system about 20 kilometres east of Green Island off Cairns. The mooring sits in 8 metres on sand, with a coral plateau of staghorn stands, table-coral terraces and boulder heads behind it and a slope that steps down to 20 metres.
Where it is and how deep
16.7359° S, 146.2617° EPublished position for this site.
The dive
You come off the boat onto a mooring that sits in 8 metres on a sandy bottom, so the descent is short and the reef is in view from the moment you leave the surface. From the sand the coral rises as a plateau: stands of staghorn among terraces of table coral, boulder heads and plates, with soft corals swaying in the gaps between them.
Work the plateau out to its edge and the ground drops away in terraces, stepping down from roughly 10 metres to 20 at the foot of the slope. That deeper edge is the turn-around. Come back up onto the coral flat with gas in hand and spend the rest of the dive at mooring depth, where the safety stop is a matter of drifting over the gardens rather than hanging in open water.
Marine life and season
- Pristine corals
| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fair | Fair | Fair | Good | Good | Prime | Prime | Prime | Prime | Good | Good | Fair |
Season follows Great Barrier Reef: Dry season (Jun–Nov) brings the clearest water and dwarf minke whales; wet-season runoff and cyclone risk lower visibility and reliability Dec–Mar.
Questions divers ask
How deep is Coral Gardens on Flynn Reef?+
The mooring sits in 8 metres on sand, and the coral plateau beside it steps down in terraces from about 10 metres to 20 metres at the foot of the slope.
Sources
- Flynn Reef - Coral Gardens — Scubago
- Flynn Reef dive site — PADI
- Australia - Great Barrier Reef - Cairns — Dive The World
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