Solitary Islands Marine Park

Fast facts

• Solitary Islands Marine Park is a small group of islands, stretching for about 75 km along the Coffs Coast, from Muttonbird Island in the south to Plover Island in the north.
• The Solitary Islands provide protection for marine species while providing idyllic conditions for diving, fishing and whale watching.
• Near Coffs Harbour, some 550 km north of Sydney.

Why go there

The largest marine protected area in New South Wales is scenically dramatic above the waterline, with blue-green seas swirling around jagged islands, and beaches in sandy coves.

Below the waterline, Solitary Islands Marine Park is one of Australia’s top scuba diving environments. Divers swim with turtles, photograph shoals of multi-coloured fish and glide past banks of rainbow-hued coral. The park’s astounding marine diversity derives from the convergence of two great ocean currents: the warmer waters of the East Australian Current, flowing from the tropical Coral Sea; and the cooler northward flow from the Tasman Sea.

More than 550 species of fish, four turtle species and various marine mammals cruise around 90 species of coral and a host of active ascidians (better known as sea squirts). Each autumn and winter, humpback whales make their way north to calve in warmer waters.

In spring, they turn and head south again to their Antarctic feeding grounds. Coffs Harbour, and the seas around Solitary Islands Marine Park, are among the best locations in Australia for whale watching, by land and by sea.

Visitors to Solitary Islands Marine Park can camp in the adjacent Yuraygir National Park (north of Red Rock), or stay in Coffs Harbour, Woolgoolga, Wooli, Red Rock and other places nearby.

Don’t miss

• Taking a charter cruise to watch playful dolphins and, in season, migrating whales.
• Casting a line into the waters, if you desire. Recreational fishing is permitted in many areas of the Solitary Islands Marine Park.
• Diving among a vivid and various host of fish, corals, sponges and sea squirts.
• Keeping an eye out for a dugong, once known as the sea cow, a rare and special marine visitor.