Catch Bag Reef Drift

Meet the site

Catch Bag Reef takes its name from a lost bag. According to the Scuba Doctor listing a well-known cray diver, transferring gear to the boat, dropped his catch bag – containing an exceptionally large crayfish – over the side on this reef, and the name stuck. The site is a flood-tide drift over kelp forest in the Lonsdale Bight between Point Lonsdale and Queenscliff, at 12–24 m, and it also works as a slack-water reef dive.

The bottom is 'large kelp fronds with broken sandstone reef' – ridges and slabs of limestone with Ecklonia and other kelps on top and ledges beneath, running east from the shallow end of Lonsdale Wall, which is only 200 m away. The drift covers a lot of it: at a knot of flood a group passes over several hundred metres of reef in a 40-minute dive, and the kelp opens and closes to show southern rock lobster and abalone in the ledges, leatherjackets and wrasse in the fronds, and, in summer, 'large schools of yellowtail kingfish', which the listing singles out and which follow the flood in through the Heads. Where the kelp thins the sponge gardens of the bight take over.

It is a less-known drift than Boarfish Reef Drift and is used by clubs and by charters looking for a change of ground, or as a second dive after the wall on the same slack-into-flood sequence: dive the wall on the flood slack, surface, and drift Catch Bag on the young flood. The kelp makes the safety stop interesting – it is possible to hang in the canopy at 5 m – but it also means keeping the float line clear of the fronds. Within the marine national park, the crayfish and abalone are now protected.

What you might see

Southern rock lobster, abalone, yellowtail kingfish (summer schools), leatherjackets, bluethroat wrasse, magpie perch, kelp (Ecklonia), sponge gardens

Location

Kelp-covered reef in Lonsdale Bight between Point Lonsdale and Queenscliff, 207 m east of Lonsdale Wall Shallow.