Dee Why Wide

Quick facts about diving at Dee Why Wide

• Location: This offshore reef is located north of Sydney Harbour

• Diver Qualifications: Advanced Divers

• Depth: 20m to 36m

• Recommended Gas: Nitrox

• Dive time: 25 mins to 60 mins

• Visibility: Up to and over 30m

• What you’ll see: Eastern blue devil fish, giant cuttlefish, kingfish, morwong, scorpion fish, groupers, snapper and boarfish.

• Topography: Boulder fields falling away to the reef edge covered with colourful sponge gardens.

• Best season to dive: Great in all seasons

A beautiful advanced Sydney reef dive

This offshore reef is located north of Sydney Harbour and is rated for advanced divers due to the depth range of 20m to 36m. We have several dive sites along this reef, which extends north to south. The reef edge has a variety of boulder structures and flat ledges and these areas are covered in dense, soft corals and sponges of various colours and shapes.

Meet the Eastern Blue Devil Fish

Our regular dive site (at approximately a 24m depth) features huge boulders that divers can swim underneath. There are also many swim throughs to explore with abundant marine life such as the elusive and colourful eastern blue devil fish. These stunning and very shy fish live in caves and along ledges. As such, they’re not often seen by scuba divers, but at Sydney Dive Charters, we’ll make a special effort to point them out for you!

Shake hands with Sydney’s Giant Cuttlefish

During our Dee Why Wide dive, we’ll also encounter giant cuttlefish – very friendly sea animals – especially during mating season where they will commonly grab hold of divers’ hands should they be interacted with them.
Giant cuttlefish only live for about 18 months, so they clearly make the most of their short lifespan. Before dying, they’ll lay hundreds of white eggs, which you’ll find clinging to anything located where there is good water movement, such as old rope for anchors, tulip soft corals, shipwrecks, etc.

Dying for the giant cuttlefish takes several weeks. They’ll begin to lose their bright colours until they turn white and start moving very slowly. During our dive at Dee Why Wide, we may encounter this white cuttlefish in caves. There we’ll also find thousands of their brethren’s white backbones (or we’ll find their buoyancy aids floating on the surface where birds will take ownership of the carcasses.)

Scuba dive with Sydney’s marine life

Divers can be treated to large schools of Kingfish swimming overhead and then circling the divers on approach. Other notable Sydney marine life to encounter on this dive include bottom dwelling fish such as the morwong, the scorpion fish (a relative of the stone fish), groupers, snapper and two types of boarfish (giant brown-spotted or long-snouted). There’s quite a bit of marine life to see, which is why this Sydney dive is ranks so highly on our top ranked Sydney scuba dives.

Summary note for our Dee Why Wide dive

Divers are limited on their dive at this Sydney dive site – not only by the volume of gas carried to their scuba tanks, but by the depth which demands an advanced certificate for divers.

Visibility can be very good at over 30m. At one of our dive sites, divers will find a very large old anchor which was lost by a bulk core carrier. It’s a pretty striking feature.

Depending on the experience of divers aboard, we can offer a one way dive where divers descend the anchor line and head in a predetermined direction for a predetermined time, then ascending mid water using a surface marker buoy (SMB) which assists the Master of the boat to safely retrieve the divers and also protect them from passing boat traffic.

Come dive Dee Why Wide with us!