Tangalooma Island Resort — Brisbane & Moreton Bay

Tangalooma Island Resort sits on Moreton Island and provides diving and snorkelling access to the Tangalooma Wrecks, one of the most accessible and genuinely enjoyable shallow dive sites in Australia.

The wrecks are a line of fifteen vessels deliberately sunk in the 1960s to create a sheltered anchorage for small boats. The side effect was an artificial reef in a few metres of water that now holds wobbegongs, schooling trevally and kingfish, rays, turtles and soft coral growth — accessible to divers, snorkellers and, in calm conditions, from the beach.

Shallow depth is what makes the site so inclusive. Newly certified divers, nervous divers and non-divers on snorkel all get a genuinely good experience from the same site, which is rare. For families where only some people dive, it solves the problem neatly.

Current is the one real planning consideration. The wrecks sit in a tidal area and water movement can be significant on the run, so slack water is strongly preferred and local knowledge about timing matters more than it appears to.

As a resort operation rather than a dedicated dive centre, the diving sits alongside a broad range of other activities — the resort is well known for its wild dolphin feeding programme and general island tourism. Divers should calibrate expectations accordingly: this is a resort that offers diving, not a dive lodge.

The wrecks are genuinely excellent for snorkelling, which makes this one of the better destinations for a mixed group where only some people dive. A snorkeller floating over the Tangalooma Wrecks sees most of what a diver does, which is not true of many sites.