The Glenelg Blocks is one of those dive sites that everybody knows, that many people thought about doing, but that not so many people have actually dived from shore. The people that we know that have dived have all done it from a boat.
It is diveable from shore though, even though it’s a 600m dive/swim out to the blocks and Kingsley, Brett and Ron decided to have a go at it! After changing into our dive gear in the parking garage of one of the beachfront apartments, we made our way out to the jetty (which by the looks on most peoples faces was a bit of an unusual sight).
It doesn’t get very deep towards the end of the jetty, only about 2.5-3.0m when we dived it (at low tide) and it only very slowly drops of to about 5.0-5.5 metres around the blocks itself. From the jetty you can simply keep an eye on your compass and go straight west. If for some reason you get lost you can slowly make your way up to the surface (it’s very shallow anyway) and have a quick peak to where the blocks and the pylons which mark the ends of it are.
On the way, you’ll see heaps of nudibranchs, crabs, seastars and we even found a pipefish (see the photo album for a picture, unfortunately it’s not in the video as the GoPro didn’t focus on it properly). There are also quite a few bits and pieces of the old jetty if you go straight west, but unfortunately no spectacular pieces.
When you get close to the blocks, you’ll suddenly notice some fish swimming around you, which is something you won’t see much in between the jetty and the blocks. There are heaps of fish on the blocks and the blocks itself are completely overgrown – a similar sight to what we’re used to from the Port Noarlunga Reef (same kind of fish life as well) and similar depths as well.
The visibility wasn’t bad on our dive (about 5-10m) and we really enjoyed both the reef in between the jetty and the blocks as well as the blocks itself. There isn’t much life on the reef, but there is enough to see to keep you occupied, as long as you focus on the macro life. The water temperature was roughly 20-21 degrees, which was surprising for the time of year (mid-December).
If you’re reading this and you are going to do this dive yourself, please make sure your tanks are topped up, as the swim out there took us about 40 minutes, we spend roughly 15 minutes on the blocks and it took us about 25 minutes to get back. It’s very shallow, but you have to be reasonably good on your air to make this a fun dive!
See the map below for more details and enjoy the video!
Photo Album of the Dive: Facebook Album
