Diving Adelaide

Adelaide Dive Sites, Underwater Photography and Marine Life

Adelaide offers an excellent selection of temperate water diving filled with beautiful invertebrate life, a myriad of fish species, and of course the famous Leafy Sea Dragon. Lovers of marine life will not be disappointed here.

Best Adelaide Dive Sites

• Rapid Bay Jetty - the best dive site in South Australia
• Edithburgh Jetty - beautiful shore dive with colorful pilings, nudibranchs, sea horses and leafy sea dragons
• Wreck of the HMAS Hobart - large wreck dove by boat. The wreck is 133 meters long, the depth is 30meters deep at the bottom, and rises as shallow as 5 meters.
• Kangaroo Island - is supposed to have some very good dive sites
• Bluff at Victor Harbour
• Whyalla - you want to dive here in cuttlefish mating season, from July to September to see the Giant cuttlefish mating
• There's more dive sites at Ben's site here.

Underwater school of fish at the Rapid Bay Jetty

Adelaide Marine Life & Photography subjects

• Fur Seals
• Cuttlefish - Giant cuttlefish mating is a great site to see at Whyalla. Otherwise squid and cuttlefish can occasionally be spotted at many of the local dive sites.
• Leafy Sea Dragons
• Short-spined Sea Horses
• Colorful Tunicates - found all over the piers of the jetties
• Nudibranchs - a good assortment of nudibranchs is found on the wrecks and piers around Adelaide, such as at Edithburgh jetty.
• Port Jackson Sharks - known as Horn sharks in California, these small harmless sharks usually rest on the bottom
• Pajama squid - found on night dives at the Edithburgh jetty 
• Weedy sea dragon - not as commonly seen as the Leafy around Adelaide, but still spotted sometimes
• Anglerfish - known as frogfish in most the world, they occassionally pop up at a dive site
• Great White Sharks - dive with them safely in cages, and hope you don't see one outside of one. The diving is done out of Port Lincoln.

Crab underwater on a pier piling in Adealide

Best time to dive Adelaide

Adelaide water temperatures

15 degrees in the winter (August/September), up to 19-21 degrees Celsius in the summer (January / February)

Adelaide underwater visibility

Varies, anywhere from 5-20 meters, depending on depth and distance from shore.

Where to stay while diving Adelaide

Adelaide city is a good place to use as a base, and you can do daily trips to the shore diving locations. Sometimes divers will spend a night on the Yorke Peninsula near Edithburgh in order to get some early dives in the area. You can read more about shore diving with a dSLR underwater camera rig.

Adelaide Underwater Photography Tips

• Explore the different habitats of each dive site, there's different fish species in the different surfgrass, eelgrass, and other habitats.
• The ends of the jetties have the most concentration of marine life
• Check tide tables to avoid strong currents
• Most dive sites are good for macro and wide-angle
• Shore diving is great and easily accessible

Adelaide Underwater Photos

Tunicates on a pier piling at the edithburgh jetty, Adelaide

Photo of the famous leafy sea dragon

Further Reading

Underwater Photography dive destinations

Dive site research and planning

Diver's delight dive shop - for rentals and Leafy dragon tours

Lots of invertebrate marine life at the Edithburgh Jetty

Further Reading

The Best Dive Destinations

Diving Milford Sound, New Zealand