Meet your guide at Dive Centre Manly, where you'll be introduced to your PADI Guide and get kitted up before heading out to the day’s best snorkelling spot. Your guide will organise all your equipment and transport you to a local site, choosing between Shelly Beach, Fairy Bower, or Fairlight Beach depending on conditions. Shelly Beach and Fairy Bower sit within Cabbage Tree Bay Marine Reserve, Sydney’s oldest marine reserve, which is exactly why the marine life here is so consistently impressive.

Once at the beach, you will receive a full briefing before heading in to explore shallow reefs and sandy patches (generally 2–10 metres deep) that make it easy to spot fish and settle into the rhythm of snorkelling. Your guide helps you find the “good stuff” that most people swim right past.

Keep your eyes out for some of Sydney’s most iconic locals: leatherjackets, stingrays, flatheads, resident turtles, Australian giant cuttlefish, octopus, wobbegongs, and NSW’s state fish, the Eastern Blue Groper — plus plenty of schooling fish moving through.