Jervis Bay, approximately 250 kilometres south of Sydney, abounds in sub-tropical marine life, especially in spring and summer, when warm east coast currents push down Australia’s east coast. A mecca for divers largely from Sydney and Canberra, Jervis Bay has seen underwater film crews from France, England and Japan. They come to film it’s unique marine life – bottom dwelling sharks, weedy sea dragons and the Giant Australian Cuttlefish – one of the world’s giant cephalopods. Tony Karacsonyi brings us this report on diving this unique oceanic bay, one of Australia’s newest marine parks.



It’s with excitement that we launch our boat at the Murray’s Beach boat ramp, near the entrance of Jervis Bay. The bay is glistening a metallic blue colour. A white-breasted sea eagle soars overhead. We scoot across the bay, to a favourite spot named ‘the docks’. We anchor near the base of a large cliff and roll over the side. The huge boulders are buzzing with reef species such as blue gropers, mados, crimson-banded wrasse, and elegant striped hula wrasse. We swim down following the 45 degree reef and settle at 25 metres, where the reef meets the sand, where some very interesting critters can be found.

Here we’ll search for the rare and beautiful red indian fish, which gets it’s name from the long dorsal fin which stretches over it’s head, like an indian’s head dress – often hard to find as they’re well camouflaged.

We discover a pair of weedy sea dragons. They’re feeding on small transparent shrimp like creatures called mysids. The sand and reef is teeming with the tiny shrimps. We swim further and see a lovely seahorse curled on a finger sponge, and a Giant Australian cuttlefish guarding it’s den. Giant Australian Cuttlefish are endemic to the waters of southern Australian and are one of the world’s giant cephalopods.

We explore further along the reef and despite seeing many beautiful reef fish, we can’t find the red indian fish. As we back track, I swim out about five metres to a lonely rock covered in kelp and sponges. The red indian fish is laying majestically against a sponge – we’re elated! A master of camouflage in this sponge-filled environment, I’m sure many scuba divers have overlooked this rare fish, thinking it’s just a sponge.

We take a few photos and it’s time to leave. Swimming up to 12 metres, we explore large caves filled with sponges, bryozoans and reef fishes. The bryozoans, which look like small mops, are home to sea spiders and red amphipods – the same kind of critters you see hopping around when you pick up kelp on the beach.

With our air running a low and our diving computers becoming saturated, we swim to the shallows where there’s two large but shallow caves extending into the cliff face. It’s always exciting when we enter these caves, as you never know what’s living inside at the time – Wobbygong Sharks, Giant’ Cuttlefish, Octopus. Grey nurse sharks sometimes cruise outside these caves.