Mushroom Reef Snorkel
LOCATION Mushroom Reef, Mornington Peninsula Victoria
DEPTH 1-3 Meters
WATER TEMP 17-20 Degrees
DIFFICULTY Easy
Easy access, shallow, sheltered in the right conditions
FEATURE
Google Map data © 2024 Imagery © Airbus, CNES / Airbus, Maxar Technologies
Mushroom Reef Snorkel
LOCATION Mushroom Reef, Mornington Peninsula Victoria
DEPTH 1-3 Meters
WATER TEMP 17-22 Degrees
DIFFICULTY Easy
Easy access, shallow, sheltered in the right conditions
FEATURE
Google Map data © 2024 Imagery © Airbus, CNES / Airbus, Maxar Technologies
Mushroom Reef Snorkel
The shallow snorkelling areas and rock pools make the spectacular Mushroom Reef Marine Sanctuary on the Mornington Peninsula a fun place to explore. You will need to pick your days and tides to get the right conditions but range of fish and stingrays are just a few of the things to look out for here.
What Can I See?
- Stingrays
- Fish
- Octopus
- Might see a weedy seadragon too, but Flinders Pier or Portsea Pier are a better bet if you really want to see one of these.
Getting There
The closest town to Mushroom Reef is Flinders on the south side of Mornington Peninsula, about 90 minutes from Melbourne. The last part of the drive to the carpark is on a sealed road through a golf course so look out for golfers and balls.
The final part of the drive is on a dirt road, about 150 metres, which is suitable for 2wd cars.
Where & How do you get in?
From the carpark it is a short walk down some wooden stairs to the beach which is where you get into the water.
Best Season
Main thing here is that it will very cold outside of summer – when it is just cold. Wetsuit recommended for long snorkels.
Potential Hazards
- Cold Water
- Currents
Recommended Gear
- Wetsuit
- Wetsuit boots
How Busy / Crowds
The reef and foreshore cover a large area but this is a popular spot for swimming, rock pooling and snorkelling so there will be people around over summer in the holidays and on weekends.
Parking
The carpark will hold about 12 cars, after that you might have a bit of a walk to the ebach if you have to park further away along the dirt access road.
The information for each snorkel spot is provided by people who have snorkelled there. However, snorkelling conditions change daily. Please be aware that wind, swell, tides and cloud cover can all affect visibility and your experience in the water.
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Tours
Snorkelling tour options for the Mornington Peninsula are below.
Best Conditions
Look for low swells and light winds. If there is a breeze, you want it from the north or east. If there is anything over a 10kph from the south probably don’t bother.
To get the protection from the reef aim for a lower tide. We visited here when the tide was in and it was to wavy to get in.
We we did snorkel it was on an outgoing tide and visibility varied a lot over the site. Maybe try at thee turn of low tide as some clean water starts to come back into the snorkelling area.
Windy Map Instructions – Click on the wind icon in the top right to see other conditions such as swell, temperature, rain. To clear the four day forecast click and close the wind icon.
Facilities at Mushroom Reef
There is not much here so bring your supplies if you are staying for the day.
Parking
About the Snorkel
There is lots of great pier snorkels on the Mornington Peninsula, but if you want a reef snorkel this is the place. Mushroom Reef Marine Sanctuary is a beautiful spot with the mushroom shaped reef extending from the beach creating a fun snorkelling and rock pooling environment.
The stem of the mushroom creates two snorkelling zones on either side which are quite shallow at low tide. In calm conditions, which we didn’t get, you can snorkel around the cap of the mushroom which is protected by another small area of reef in front of it. We can’t wait to get back here and snorkel around the cap.
We started on the left side of the stem. The highlight was spotting some 40cm wide stingrays moving between the weeds. We didn’t see much else out this side so we decided to cross the stem to the other side – that’s when we realized how quickly the reef is exposed!
We ended up taking off our fins and walking across the rocks to the other side– thank goodness for reef shoes – as the depth very quickly went to less than 30cm. Once we got our faces back into the water, we found the visibility had turned for the worse. Maybe it was the tide rushing out, but viz went from 6-7 m to less than half that.
Despite this, we spotted a lot more fish on this side and if conditions had been better, we would have stayed in a lot longer but the water was getting cloudier by the minute. The highlight on this side was a school of small snapper that hung around one of the sand patches.
Back on land some regular snorkellers here confirmed they too had not seen much which surprised them because in better conditions they said the reef can be like an aquarium.
So that is the joy of snorkelling, you never know what you will get. We’ll try our luck here again one day. In the meantime, the small stingrays we spotted were enough to make this a winning snorkel anyway.
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