Jervis Bay Dive Trip 

Only a couple of hours’ drive South of the Abyss shop brings you one of our beloved weekend dive trip destinations: Jervis Bay. Jervis Bay is home to a number of dive sites suitable to a wide range of divers, as well as an impressive diversity of marine life, making it a great weekend away no matter what kind of diving you enjoy!

Due to the popularity of this trip & the array of potential dive locations, we run a trip down to Jervis Bay every month, including the occasional Mon-Tue trip if you’re after a mid-week break with fewer people! We have one of our Abyss Instructors on board the boat, as well as a local dive guide, so we are able to welcome all levels of divers. Some dive sites exceed the 18m mark & are lovely deeper dives, but these sites also have a sloping wall that allows them to be accessed by Open Water certified divers to easily stay at the 18m limit and still enjoy a fantastic dive. With two guides on board, we can easily cater to different levels on the same trip.

If you are an OW diver and are waiting to further your diving education and take advantage of the deeper dive sites available while on this trip, you can add your Advanced Openwater and/or your Enriched Air training to the trip at a discounted price and become a better diver while enjoying the great diving Jervis Bay offers and a holiday away for the weekend all rolled into one. We run a set group of modules for the Advanced course on this trip. So, on this course, you’ll learn some similar modules as you would on our course in Sydney: Navigation, Deep, Boat, and Underwater Naturalist. However, there is a WWII bomber plane wreck in the harbour that we get to dive on during this trip, so we actually teach you a bit about wreck diving as well if you do your Advanced course while in Jervis Bay. =) Another big difference between completing your Advanced course in Jervis Bay is that there is a colony of seals that hang around all year round! If you haven’t dived with seals before, it's one of the most amazing experiences & is still a top-of-the-list experience for all of our instructors.

Whether you’re doing your Advanced Open Water course or not on this trip, the plane wreck is a really cool dive to check out. It’s still fully intact and lies in only around 10m of water sitting upright on the sand. Depending on the time of year, you might get lucky and spot some baby Port Jackson sharks hanging around the sand near the plane wreck too. In addition to this wreck, there are a number of dive sites both in and outside the harbour, so there is still plenty of diving to enjoy, even if conditions are too rough to get out of the bay. Drum & Drumsticks is a great dive north of the bay, and this is where the main seal colony congregates. They are super playful and enjoy swimming around with you, and will mimic your movements the more you interact with them! Point Perpendicular, just below the famous lighthouse on the North head of the bay, offers some nice drift diving and often bigger schools of fish along the cascading rock walls. Inside the bay, there are a number of dive sites that range from 15-30m+ and have some beautiful sponge life. You can enjoy a spectacular array of colours, larger fish life as Grey Nurse Sharks swim past at the Nursery, or the marine reserve dive sites offer an abundance of fish life. Alternatively, slow right down and look for the little creatures that are plentiful as well, ranging from pygmy pipefish, potbelly seahorses, upside-down pipefish, sea spiders, and more!

After a couple of boat dives 50m away from the boat ramp, give your gear a quick rinse in the wash tubs, and enjoy a shower before heading out for sunset drinks at Hyams Beach. Hyams beach is known for having some of the whitest sand in the world. Watch the sunset with a glass of champagne and some nibblies before a pizza party back at the accommodation.

For those that are keen, sneak back down to the beach at night and see if the amazing  bioluminescence is putting on a show while you’re down there! Just on the shore, only 5 min walk from the accommodation, can offer a spectacular lightening blue light show in the waves on the beach - if you’re lucky!

Finally, finish off a great trip with a couple more amazing dives on Sunday morning and grab a delicious pie from the local bakery just across from the dive shop before getting back in your car and heading home.

You never know what you might see; it’s a location that offers both the chance for rare sightings along the coast as well as fabulous consistent resident marine life! This is a trip you can do over and over again and have an amazing time every time!

By Andria Payne

What Divers Say About Jervis Bay