Mooloolaba · Australia · Reef · Cave & cavern
The Hole
A 3 m hole dropping into a bowl of wobbegongs and groupers
Area photo: Tanya Dedyukhina · CC BY 3.0
The one swim-through Scuba World calls safe on the Mooloolaba coral reefs: a hole roughly 3 metres in diameter that drops into a larger bowl where wobbegongs and groupers live. The site runs 15 to 21 metres, and once you are through, the dive follows a ledge in a north-south direction with a lot of macro life along it.
Where it is and how deep
26.6483° S, 153.1556° EApproximate position — the dashed circle shows where the site lies; your operator's briefing has the mooring.
The dive
The hole is the dive. It is roughly 3 metres in diameter and drops down into an even larger bowl, and the residents Scuba World names, wobbegongs and groupers, are usually the ones sitting in it. Depths run 15 to 21 metres, so there is no great margin for hanging about at the bottom: drop in, look through before you commit, and let the group go one diver at a time.
After the hole the rest of the dive is the ledge, which runs in a north-south direction and carries heaps of macro life, so the second half is a slow swim with a torch into the cuts in the rock. Scuba World calls this the only safe swim-through on the Mooloolaba coral reefs and asks for Open Water certification, but an overhead is still an overhead and deserves the same care.
Marine life and season
- Wobbegongs
- Groupers
- Macro critters
| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fair | Fair | Fair | Fair | Good | Good | Prime | Prime | Prime | Prime | Fair | Fair |
Season follows Mooloolaba: Grey nurse sharks hold at Nurse Rock July–October, the months operators also rate clearest; summer is murkier and falls inside the November–April cyclone season.
Sources
- Mooloolaba Reef Diving — Scuba World
- The Hole — Scubago
More dive sites in Mooloolaba
Reef
Thousands of anemones, and shrimp 5 mm long
Wreck
A 133 m destroyer on sand at 28 m, dived outside only
Wall
A 50 m wall with an overhang you shoot from underneath
Reef
A mini cave that usually holds pelagics and wobbegongs
Reef
Grey nurse sharks on the rock from July to October
Sheltered ledge from 16 m up to 5 m, thick with nudibranchs
Reef
Eighty metres of coral-covered boulders on open sand
Reef
Reef shaped like a hull, in 23 to 32 m
Similar dives elsewhere
A protected colony of endangered grey nurse sharks
A blue groper named Greg often joins divers here
One of the largest ocean caverns in the Southern Hemisphere
A rock arch with its flat top at 24 m and a swim-through below