Liveaboard Diving in Osprey Reef
What To Expect On An Osprey Reef Liveaboard
Setting sail on a Cairns-based liveaboard tour bound for Osprey Reef, you will enter a remote, unspoiled underwater wilderness full of vibrant colors, curious sea creatures, and stunning scenery. The reef is over 60 kilometers from any other, ensuring a remoteness that will leave you feeling on the world's edge. It lies a whopping 350 kilometers from the city of Cairns in Queensland in the Coral Sea section of the Great Barrier Reef, and due to this isolated position, it is only accessible via liveaboard.
Osprey Reef is famous for its superb visibility (often over 40 meters) and big fish residents, particularly the number of sharks at North Horn. This site is perhaps the most well-known at Osprey, but several other exciting areas exist. When diving Osprey Reef on a liveaboard, you'll likely explore what Fairy Grotto, Admiralty Anchor, and False Entrance offers.
What You Can See
Excited by big fish? Are you in awe of bright, natural, and vivid colors? You're in the right place! A liveaboard dive tour to Osprey Reef will spoil you with the variety and numbers of large creatures in the water, all gliding through a scene filled with a blissful array of hard and soft corals. The reefs are healthy, of all shapes, sizes, and colors you can care to imagine. Divers regularly encounter large amounts of graceful pelagics and elegant Green and Loggerhead Turtles. There's an extraordinary plethora of life here all year round, but if you dive here between June and November, you may also come across the odd Humpback Whale!
Gaze at the many sharks passing by while swimming through large schools of Barracuda or Giant Trevally at Admiralty Anchor. Move onto False Entrance, where again you'll join huge schools of fish, this time including big-eye Trevally - and if you're diving in the Australian winter, you may be lucky enough to catch a glimpse of the peculiar-looking Hammerhead shark. Your liveaboard trip to Osprey Reef will undoubtedly include North Horn, the site of probably Australia's most famous shark feed, where Grey Reefs, Silkys, Silvertips, and Hammerheads all converge to make a spectacle that will last long in the memory of any diver.
Getting to Osprey Reef
Because of its remoteness, Osprey Reef is difficult to get to, making the diving even more spectacular as you'll be sharing the water with very few, other than the stunning marine life on the show. The only realistic way to dive here is via a Cairns-based liveaboard. Many of these Australian liveaboard trips are between 4 and 7 days, giving you enough time to sail, dive, and relax.
Cairns is a popular tourist town in the northeast corner of Queensland and is the most common port for departing liveaboard diving cruises to the Coral Sea. It has an airport close to town, a large international hub, and many well-known international carriers serve it. You'll likely be able to fly directly into Cairns from overseas (unless you want to combine other areas of Australia into your trip). If this is not possible in the unlikely event, there are daily domestic flights to Cairns from the even larger cities of Brisbane, Sydney, and Melbourne. Most liveaboard operators will offer a complimentary pick-up service from your accommodation.
