Western Australia

Shire of Exmouth

Australia

From the Exmouth Visitor's Center web site (link below) : THE NAVY PIER RE-OPENS FOR DIVING News Date: 1/07/2007 Closed since the 31st July 2006, the Navy Pier will be re opening for diving in July 2007. After a lengthy tender process, the Navy Pier, which is one of Australia's BEST TEN SHORE DIVES, will re open for certified divers. The successful tender was won by Ningaloo Reef Dreaming. To take a dive on this magnificent site please contact the Exmouth Visitor Centre for more information. A dive on the pier, as described by Ningaloo Reef Dreaming: After we pick up all the customers we will drive to our warehouse and meet at the briefing room. Here we will meet and greet and have coffee and tea and cookies! Yes, paperwork needs to be done, and then the Exmouth Navy Pier briefing. Once everyone knows what to do, with who and where and also what not to do and everything is clear, it is time to set up dive gear, including a safety sausage and compass for every diver. Time to drive to the Naval commander office for the key and correct passes, we are nearly there where we want to be, the water! A short site briefing, wetsuits on, kit up, buddy checks done and there we go! Unbelievable! The first thing we see is a large school of Barracuda, to the other side we see Batfish, large Cods and also a large school of Giant Trevally is swimming by. Well that is a start! We keep descending following one of the pylons of the Pier and we are surprised by all the coral we see, just fantastic. Coral trout, Snapper, Cods, Lion fish, you name it, we have seen them all. Then suddenly coming from behind one of the pylons appears a Queensland Groper, bigger than I am! Resting on a piece of the Pier structure is a Wobbegong Shark, just under the main Pier structure. We are heading South and challenge our buoyancy in between the pylons and Pier structure and on our way we welcome more coral with lots of Nudi Branches in all different colours, waving to us, fantastic macro opportunities-- this is a photographer's dream! White tip reef Sharks, Frog fish(es), and the Tawny Nurse Shark! There, an octopus is changing its colour and if we look up, all we can see are schooling fish. Time to go up and whilst we stay on the 5 meter mark we are surrounded by Trevally until we reach the surface. This was just unbelievable, now we know why the Exmouth navy Pier is rated amongst the top 10 shore dive sites in the world!!!! Warm Regards, Jeroen de Vries, Ningaloo Reef Dreaming (see link below)

The NorthWest Cape covers a huge area with the Ningaloo reef stretching 260 km from slightly north of Exmouth to Amherst Point, south of Coral Bay. Exmouth is a small town of approximately 2500 people and is situated 1270 km north of Perth.