Port Phillip · Australia · Wall
Foggy Reef
The shallow 8 m top of the Lonsdale wall system
Area photo: Kgbo · CC BY-SA 4.0
Foggy Reef sits at the southern-most end of the Lonsdale wall system, inside the Port Phillip Heads Marine National Park. Its top is shallow, at around eight metres, which makes it the gentlest way into this ground, and swimming northeast from there brings you out to the edge where the wall proper begins.
Where it is and how deep
38.2981° S, 144.6236° EPublished position for this site.
The dive
You drop onto the flat top of the reef and stay there for most of the dive. At around eight metres there is no depth pressure and no decompression maths, so the ground gets worked slowly rather than crossed, and a tank lasts. That shallow top is the reason this end of the system is where newer divers are taken rather than the deeper sections further along the wall.
Swim northeast and the top runs out at the edge of the wall, where the reef ends and the ground drops away. That edge is the turning point of the dive; how far anyone follows it down is a matter of training and the plan agreed on the boat, and the shallow top is what most people come to this site for. The whole reef lies inside the Port Phillip Heads Marine National Park.
Marine life and season
The sources we used don't single out particular species here.
| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Good | Good | Good | Good | Prime | Prime | Prime | Good | Good | Good | Good | Good |
Season follows Port Phillip: The spider crab aggregation runs May–Jul; winter also brings the clearest water, while summer is warmest but greener.
Questions divers ask
How deep is Foggy Reef?+
The dive is on the top of the wall at around eight metres. The ground drops away northeast of there, but no depth is published for the deeper section at this end of the Lonsdale wall system.
Sources
- Foggy Reef — Scubago/SSI
More dive sites in Port Phillip
More than a hundred nudibranch species under one pier
Reef
A 10-22 m reef of overhangs and swim-throughs
Walls stepping down past 60 m, strewn with house-sized boulders
Pinnacle
A 200 m rock circled in one dive, 18 m sand to 12 m top
Ledges and swim-throughs in 6-9 m, straight off the car park
Wall
A broken wall from 12 m to 30 m, cut with overhangs
A 138 m guided missile frigate sunk at 30 m
Wreck
A WWI submarine at 27 m, silt-free inside on the right day
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Near-vertical walls dived four or five times a year
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