Foggy Reef

Meet the site

Foggy Reef sits at the southern end of the Lonsdale Wall system, where the wall meets the ocean end of the entrance, and it carries a story in its name: it was found and named 'as the fog rolled in and this amazing part of the wall was discovered'. The Scuba Doctor listing puts the reef top at about 8 m with the wall edge dropping to around 25 m, a shallower profile than the central wall, and rates it for Open Water and beyond – though the position at the entrance means most operators treat it as an Advanced site.

Two things distinguish it. The first is the encrustation: the listing describes the walls as 'heavily encrusted' with soft coral, gorgonians and sponges and 'amazing overhangs and undercuts', and because the reef top is shallow much of this is in good light. The second is the wreckage. Roughly 20 m back from the drop-off a huge old admiralty anchor is embedded in the rock, so overgrown it is easy to swim over, and on the sand opposite it lie two old cannons that appear and disappear with the movement of the sand. Neither has been formally attributed, but the Lonsdale Reef claimed many sailing ships in the nineteenth century – the George Roper, Holyhead, Conside and Light of the Age all lie within a kilometre – and the artefacts are consistent with that history.

The entrance position is also the site's hazard. Slack here is short and the ebb sets straight out into Bass Strait, which is why the guide is unusually blunt about exit planning. The Cave, with its truck-sized cavern at 30 m, is 35 m to the east and is often dived from the same drop by the deeper divers in a group.

What you might see

Soft corals, gorgonians, sponges, zoanthids, southern blue devil, southern rock lobster, old wife, boarfish, sweep, wrasse, fur seals, cuttlefish

Location

Southern end of the Lonsdale Wall system at the entrance, about 900 m east-south-east of Point Lonsdale lighthouse and 35 m west of The Cave.