Lazy Diving Days: Easy Shore Diving on Melbourne’s Mornington Peninsula

In Melbourne’s shore diving paradise, local knowledge is optional for a number of dive sites, as PT Hirschfield explains

Why Melbourne Is a Shore Diving Paradise

It’s a February Friday morning on Melbourne’s Mornington Peninsula. The sun is streaming over the bay, with as many interstate and overseas dive tourists entering and exiting the shallow shorelines as there are locals. The water’s 20 degrees C.

Today the gentle ebb and flow of dive tourists hails from South Australia, New Zealand, Portugal, Colombia, Seattle and beyond. While some have spontaneously teamed up with or hired local guides, others are comfortable diving solo beneath the peninsula’s many popular diving piers. Or with buddies they’ve brought from home.

Some arm themselves with essential hints about the tides of Flinders or Portsea from one of several local dive shops. But perennial pier favourites Rye and Blairgowrie (affectionately called ‘Blair’ by locals) are rarely undiveable.

They can typically be dived with little more than a full tank of air and a wish for critters – dive buddies and local knowledge optional. There are no steep steps, rocky ledges or cliffs to navigate water entry and exit beneath Melbourne’s piers. Just long, gentle baptisms where a 12-litre tank has been known to last for two hours or more, usually in 2m-10m depth.

The parameters of the dive sites are quite literally signposted by tall pier structures that stretch out over the water. There aren’t many places in the world where visiting divers might jump in to explore quite safely, without so much as a site briefing. Just keep in mind that Blairgowrie is a working marina with boat traffic. There’s signage at the start of the pier clearly indicating areas that can and can’t be dived.

There’s nothing stopping suitably qualified and experienced recreational divers from jumping in solo and navigating their way out between the sponge-encrusted pylons and back again. Because marine life loves structure, there’s usually plenty to see, especially if you know where to look. Substrate, pylons, sea walls, water column and surface each provide a separate treasure chest to explore. Only with expert local knowledge can you consider exploring safely beyond the pylons. As divers share all the piers with fishers, be mindful of fishing line, hooks and squid jigs from above.

Located on the 1,930 sq km Port Phillip Bay rather than on open ocean, the water on the western coast of the Mornington Peninsula is largely protected. Melbourne’s notoriously changeable weather is a bonus for divers, as unfavourable conditions are rare and tend to pass quickly.

Even on the worst day, diveable conditions can almost always be found within half an hour’s drive. Several of the most popular sites are less than ten minute’s drive from each other, providing ample dive options.

There’s nothing difficult about shore diving in Melbourne. It’s generally considered easy for divers of all skill levels and is frequently rewarding, with or without a local guide to assist you.

Maria from Portugal and Kevin from Colombia

Maria is on a Work and Holiday Visa from Belgium, while her partner Kevin from Colombia is studying and working in Melbourne. They’ve hired dive gear plus the services of local dive instructor Warren through Extreme Watersport in Capel Sound to guide them at Rye Pier.

Both are new to diving, with 14 dives between them. Maria says: ‘We thought we’d have to go far away for diving. The water was kind of cold, but we were distracted seeing the fish. My favourite was the pufferfish and Kevin’s was the seahorse. We were lucky to see an octopus!’

‘Kevin was always with the instructor Warren, who is very nice. We like him a lot. The dive felt super safe. The water is not deep, and there are so many things to see.’

Their chosen dive shop Extreme Watersport provides courses, fun dives and services to novice and experienced divers visiting from interstate and overseas. They also run dive trips and boat dives, with a steady stream of keen local and visiting shore divers visiting the shop for air fills, gear purchase and servicing.

Easy Access, Long Bottom Times: Daisy and Amanda from South Australia

South Australian divers Diana (better known as Daisy) and Amanda are exiting the water at Blairgowrie Pier. Like many local and visiting divers, they’re carting dive gear and hefty camera rigs in beach wagons to save their backs as they transit between flat, spacious carparks and dedicated divers’ pontoons and platforms. It’s all very civilised.

Like many dive tourists, this is not their first trip to Port Phillip Bay piers, which become very easy to navigate after an introductory dive or two.

Daisy and Amanda have left their beloved leafy seadragons at home, ‘looking for a bit of variety and some weedy seadragons’. During Melbourne’s shallow pier dives, weedy seadragons are easily found in less than 5m depth at Flinders (on the peninsula’s slightly wilder Westernport side), and at Portsea, one of the more-challenging pier dives on the bay side due to surge.

While there’s plenty of boat diving options in Port Philip Bay and dozens of wrecks to explore, the ladies prefer diving under the piers at their leisure, opting for a ‘long slow potter with no-one bugging us.’ The dive they’ve just finished is a ‘shorter one’ from their week-long divecation at ‘just’ 85 minutes. They’ve been aiming for two dives each day, between 90 minutes and two hours bottom time, exploring Blairgowrie, Rye, Flinders and Portsea.

While night dives can be rewarding, Daisy and Amanda prefer day diving. With good sunlight, they nominate Blairgowrie as their favourite. Though Flinders can be a bit tricky to navigate the tide, swell and wind direction, they sought local knowledge for the best outcomes: ‘The viz was around two metres at 10am. We were told by a dive shop owner to wait til 11am. So we waited, it cleared up and we went in.’ Daisy remarks: ‘We saw a lot more seahorses when we dived here in April than we did just now.’ It’s not that the seahorses weren’t there. You just have to know where they like to hide.

Pier Diving on the Mornington Peninsula: Judy from Wellington, NZ

As Daisy and Amanda return from their latest dive through the Blair carpark, doctor Judy is assembling her underwater camera at her rental car, straight from her luggage. She’s just landed at Melbourne airport after a 6am flight from Wellington. She’s driven straight to the Mornington Peninsula for a couple of dives, before heading back into the city for weekend work commitments.

This is her third visit to the Mornington Peninsula: ‘I’d always associated Melbourne with coffee culture and shopping. The piers in Port Phillip Bay are seriously underrated. I’d never heard of them until I met Jules Casey (aka Peninsula local legend, One Breath Diver) during an overseas liveaboard.’

‘Even when she was saying how wonderful these piers were, I was still dubious. Until I dived them. While I’ve tacked my dives onto work trips, I could easily spend a week or longer just diving the piers.’

‘It fascinates me that there’s so much to see, so close to shore, in built-up urban areas. Access is generally easy and the shallow diving means I’m not worried about no-fly times. These depths allow for long, slow dives. The piers are a photographer’s dream!’

Peninsula dive site carparks are friendly places. Having previously dived these piers solo, Judy unexpectedly finds herself with an expert local dive buddy who offers to help her locate the critters.

‘I’m comfortable navigating the dive myself, but having a local who knows where to look for things was invaluable. I would never have seen the octopus trail or so many adult and baby seahorses on my own.’

In terms of hiring a specialist local guide, Judy says: ‘It comes down to the individual and what they want to see and their comfort level. I saw things I otherwise wouldn’t have. Though diving on your own allows you to go at your own pace, and I’ve never been short of things to see. I guess if you are after something specific like weedy sea dragons, then a guide would help.’

Unguided but Local Knowledge: Natalie from Seattle, USA

Natalie has been planning to dive in Melbourne with her Aussie friend for almost a decade. By day two of her long-awaited week-long adventure, Natalie declared: ‘If I had to go home right now, I would do so completely satisfied!’ Having a local dive buddy to share and guide the underwater adventures elevated Natalie’s experience to the aquatic equivalent of an African safari. Her first dive at Blairgowrie Pier had shown her pale octopus, baby seahorses, massive smooth rays, banjo sharks and more. Her local dive buddy showed her many baby cuttlefish as well as adults, hidden beneath the concrete matting along the back seawall.

Natalie’s second dive day at Flinders was hand-picked using local knowledge for optimal conditions. With abundant weedy sea dragons and a gentle cuddle initiated by an enormous Maori octopus (bigger than many of the Giant pacific octopus she’d seen in Seattle), Natalie proclaimed this ‘one of the best dives of my life!’

By day three, she’d crossed ‘blue ringed octopus’ from the top of her ‘bucket list’, locating one for herself during a morning dive, hunting across Rye’s sea floor. On a subsequent night dive here, Natalie encountered big belly and shorthead seahorses, marvelling that there were ‘too many to count!’

Travelling from the much-colder waters of America’s Pacific North West to shore dive in Port Phillip bay is a massive journey. Natalie considers this one of the most epic adventures of her dive life so far.

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