Whyalla Jetty

Whyalla Jetty Dive Guide, Upper Spencer Gulf

By ScubaDownUnder Team · 2026-01-02

Read this first. Whyalla's jetty is a walking and fishing jetty, and we have not found a dive shop, dive club or council page that describes diving under it. If you are coming to Whyalla to dive, the site you are probably thinking of is Point Lowly, the giant cuttlefish breeding ground on the peninsula north-north-east of town, and the 2026 aggregation there collapsed to the lowest number on record (see below).

Whyalla sits in upper Spencer Gulf, in Barngarla country. It began in 1901 as Hummock's Hill, the end of BHP's tramway carrying iron ore from Iron Knob to the sea, and its first jetty was built to ship that ore from 1903. The town's steelworks still stand beside it.

The Jetty

The public jetty on the foreshore today is new. It opened in 2020 to replace a 122-metre jetty, and Whyalla City Council describes it as 165 metres long, with a further 150 metres of walkway around its circular end, about 315 metres in all. It stands on 102 pylons driven into the seabed, has a pre-cast concrete deck and a balustrade around its whole perimeter, and is lit along its handrail at night. The South Australian Tourism Commission calls it the only circular jetty in the Southern Hemisphere.

The council built it for walking and fishing. Signs say jumping is not allowed, the deck is 1.5 metres higher than the old jetty's, and the council warns that the water can become quite shallow as the tide changes; in 2020 police said jetty jumping could bring a fine of close to $200. Swimming is catered for at a separate enclosure inside the marina, which you walk past on the way to the jetty.

Diving It

No source we found gives a depth under the jetty or describes a dive there, so treat it as an unguided shore dive where you will be finding things out for yourself. Enter from the shore, not from the deck. The jetty sits beside the marina, so expect boats coming and going and anglers' lines from the rails.

iNaturalist records within about a kilometre of the jetty include spotted, deepbody and brushtail pipefish, several gobies, King George whiting, rock and southern bluespotted flathead, globefish, ornate cowfish, moonlighters, old wives, southern reef squid and a handful of giant Australian cuttlefish. Many are shore and shallow-water records rather than dive observations, so take the list as a guide to what lives in the area. In June 2026 SARDI's divers sighted a single cuttlefish at the BHP wall near Whyalla, outside their survey area. No leafy or weedy seadragon has been recorded on iNaturalist within 40 kilometres of Whyalla, so do not expect one here.

The upper gulf swings between cold winters and hot summers: SARDI's temperature loggers at nearby Point Lowly have recorded water from 11.3 °C in August to 27.8 °C in February.

Cuttlefish Rules Around Whyalla

The jetty is inside the northern Spencer Gulf cuttlefish closure. Since 22 December 2025 the ban on taking cuttlefish has been part of the Fisheries Management Act: nobody may catch cuttlefish in the waters from Arno Bay to Wallaroo Jetty, including the zone between the Whyalla Steelworks Jetty, the Port Bonython Jetty and the Point Lowly Lighthouse, and the fine is up to $20,000.

The breeding aggregation itself is at Point Lowly. In a normal year tens of thousands of giant Australian cuttlefish gather on the rocky shore there between May and August, and SARDI's estimates since 1998 range from 13,500 in 2013 to 247,000 in 2020, with about 64,000 in 2025. In 2026 SARDI's standard surveys found none, the Department for Environment and Water's estimate was 1,811, the lowest on record, and SARDI considers the harmful algal bloom likely to be a significant factor. From 1 July 2026 a 90-day exclusion zone banned swimming, snorkelling, diving and anchoring in the marine park between Black Point and Stony Point, sanctuary zone included. That zone is on the Point Lowly peninsula, not at the town jetty, but check DEW's latest advice before planning a winter trip for the cuttlefish.

Site Access and Logistics

Whyalla is about 395 kilometres from Adelaide. The jetty is on the foreshore beside the marina, off Buttlingarra Way, and is open around the clock. Whyalla Dive Shop at 33B Playford Avenue (whydive.com.au) is the town's dive shop; it cancelled its 2026 cuttlefish season because of the low numbers, so check its hours and services before you travel. For a dry afternoon, the World War II corvette ex-HMAS Whyalla, the first ship built in the town, sits beside the Lincoln Highway and can be toured through the Whyalla Maritime Museum.

Sources

- Whyalla City Council: Jetty Q and As (whyalla.sa.gov.au, our city) - Whyalla City Council: Potentially fatal consequences of jetty jumping, 2020 (whyalla.sa.gov.au, latest news) - Whyalla City Council: Permanent protection for Giant Australian Cuttlefish now in place (whyalla.sa.gov.au, latest news) - South Australian Tourism Commission: Whyalla Jetty - Wikipedia: Whyalla - iNaturalist: observations within 1 km of the Whyalla jetty, and leafy and common seadragon observations within 40 km of Whyalla (none), queried 14 October 2026 (inaturalist.org) - SARDI: 2026 Giant Australian Cuttlefish population estimate, advice note to PIRSA, 7 August 2026, PDF (pir.sa.gov.au) - SA Department for Environment and Water: More monitoring and research for Giant Australian Cuttlefish as numbers reach historic lows (21 August 2026) - SA Department for Environment and Water: More protection for Giant Australian Cuttlefish (30 June 2026) - PIRSA: Giant Australian Cuttlefish management (pir.sa.gov.au, recreational fishing) - Whyalla Dive Shop - Scuba Divers Federation of SA: newsletter of July 2026, sdfsa.net

Header photo: Whyalla marina and breakwater from Hummock Hill in July 2026, with the jetty running out beyond the breakwater, by Calistemon, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.