Geoffrey Bay snorkel trail

The snorkel trail

The trail starts from Marine Parade, opposite Arcadia village, and is marked by four numbered surface floats. Near the first float, seaweed beds shelter small fish. Further out you swim over staghorn, cauliflower, brain and lettuce corals, with angelfish, butterflyfish and yellowtail demoiselles around them.

The second and third floats are home to giant clams placed on the trail as part of a long-running clam project. They were reared in 1986 and have shells up to about 1.3 m across. Look, but don’t stand on coral or hang onto the floats.

The Moltke wreck

Just past the fourth float, towards the point, lies the Moltke. She was a three-masted iron barque built in Hamburg in 1870. After running aground on the Queensland coast in 1890 she was refloated and used as a coal hulk, then scuttled in Geoffrey Bay in 1911. She sits in about 8–10 m of water and is now covered in coral and fish.

A short swim from the trail, strong swimmers can find the propeller and engine block of a Curtiss Falcon aircraft that crashed in December 1943.

Conditions

Visibility drops during and after south-easterly winds. Avoid the very low and very high tides around new and full moons. Marine stingers are present in tropical Queensland waters all year, with the highest risk from November to May; the Queensland Government suggests a full-body lycra suit for protection. There are more than 20 known shipwrecks around Magnetic Island; the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority points visitors to the Magnetic Island Shipwreck Guide for the full list and best-practice guidelines.