Portsea Cray Reef

Meet the site

Portsea Cray Reef is a patch of kelp-covered limestone ledges just off the end of Portsea Pier, in 5–12 m on the front beach, and the Scuba Doctor listing gives it an Open Water rating and the standard slack-water restriction but no description. The name records its history as a crayfish spot within a swim of the pier, and the reef is one of a chain of small reefs – Portsea Pier East Reef and West Reef are listed separately by Scuba Doctor – that run along the Portsea shore between the pier and Portsea Hole 800 m to the north-west.

The habitat is the shallow Heads-influenced reef of the Portsea front beach: ledges and gutters with Ecklonia and other kelps on top, sponges and ascidians on the undercuts, and sand and seagrass between. In such reef the residents are southern rock lobster in the ledges, weedy seadragons along the seagrass edge, big blue-throated and senator wrasse, old wives, magpie perch, leatherjackets, zebrafish and scalyfin, with cuttlefish in winter, rays on the sand and the seahorses and pipefish of the Portsea Pier piles a short distance away. Because it is within the marine national park the crayfish, once the point of the site, are now protected.

It is a modest, sheltered dive whose value is convenience: three minutes from the pier by boat, a float-swim for the fit, slack-water only but inside the bay and diveable in most weather except a northerly. The Portsea operators use it for check-out and training dives and as a fallback, and it pairs with Portsea Pier itself for a two-dive day from the one car park. Data confidence is low because the published record is position and depth only; the description of the fauna is drawn from the neighbouring Portsea front-beach sites.

What you might see

Southern rock lobster, weedy seadragon, bluethroat and senator wrasse, old wife, magpie perch, leatherjackets, zebrafish, scalyfin, giant cuttlefish, stingrays, kelp, sponges

Location

Reef inside the bay 178 m north-east of the end of Portsea Pier, on the Portsea front beach.

Facilities nearby

Portsea Pier foreshore: paid parking, public toilets, cafes and pub on Point Nepean Road; dive shops in Portsea/Rye for air