Nelson Bay · Australia · Reef · Artificial reef · Sand slope
Little Beach
Beach entry to a jetty and a sunken barge at 12 m
Area photo: Matthew Kane · CC0
A shallow shore dive off a sandy beach, running over ribbon weed to the Little Beach Boathouse jetty in 3-5 m and on to the wreckage of a sunken barge in 10-12 m. The jetty pylons hold dense fish life and the barge works as an artificial reef, so the site suits wide-angle photography rather than a slow macro hunt.
Where it is and how deep
32.7134° S, 152.1582° EApproximate position — the dashed circle shows where the site lies; your operator's briefing has the mooring.
The dive
Walk in off the sandy beach and follow the slope out over ribbon weed. The sand and weed run along to the Little Beach Boathouse jetty in 3-5 m, and the pylons there are the first real stop: the structure is consistently full of fish, and in that depth of water there is plenty of light for wide-angle photography.
From the jetty a swim of roughly 100 m takes you out to the sunken wreckage of a barge in about 10-12 m, which now stands as an artificial reef and is the deepest point of the dive. The route back is the same one in reverse, up the slope and along the weed to the beach, with the shallows near the exit giving somewhere easy to spend the end of the gas supply.
Marine life and season
- Reef fish swarms
- Frogfish
- Wobbegongs
- Groupers
- Octopus & cuttlefish
- Macro critters
| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Good | Good | Good | Prime | Prime | Prime | Prime | Prime | Good | Good | Good | Good |
Season follows Nelson Bay: Apr–Aug is clearest and coldest, with giant cuttlefish courting in winter; summer runoff can drop visibility to a few metres.
Questions divers ask
How deep is the Little Beach dive?+
The jetty section sits in 3-5 m and the sunken barge, about 100 m further out, lies in roughly 10-12 m. That is the deepest part of the dive, so the whole route stays inside shallow no-decompression limits.
What can you see at Little Beach?+
The jetty pylons hold dense fish life, and the site's own listing names frogfish, ghostpipefish, eastern blue grouper, moray eels, wobbegong and blind sharks, pineapple fish, wrasse and cuttlefish among the regulars.
Sources
- Little Beach - NSW — Scubago
More dive sites in Nelson Bay
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Reef
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Wall
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Similar dives elsewhere
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