Cook Island Dive Weekend

Cook Island has many amazing dive sites, attached is Mary's Rock and under that you'll find tubes running all over, around the corner is the turtle nesting area and many many more quality dives, the more you dive it the more you have to see

Cook Island Aquatic Reserve

• One of the few NSW islands, is located approximately 600m offshore from Fingal Head and four kilometres southeast of Tweed Heads in Northern NSW. Cook Island Aquatic Reserve includes the waters within and around Cook Island to a 500m radius from a survey marker on the island (approximately 78 hectares). The Aquatic Reserve was declared on October 23, 1998 to protect the marine biodiversity of the island’s reef system.

Legislation

• Cook Island hosts a great diversity of marine life resulting from the warm east Australian current from the north converging with cooler currents from the south. Temperate, subtropical and tropical species of fish, crustaceans and molluscs are found around the island.Cook Island is also visited or inhabited by a number of protected species including the Giant Queensland Groper, black cod, estuary cod and the grey nurse shark.Cook Island, Julian Rocks and the Solitary Islands, are thought to provide ‘stepping stones’ for tropical larvae dispersal down the coast. All these islands are now marine protected areas.

• The Cook Island Aquatic Reserve provides for a host of activities including swimming, whale watching, boating and diving. Fishing by all methods is prohibited for all waters from the mean high water mark on the island to a boundary defined by five marker buoys. See table below for the coordinates, and refer to the map.Fishing by setlines is prohibited within the whole aquatic reserve.The installation of 13 moorings at popular diving locations around the island have replaced the need to anchor,  protecting fragile corals and other marine invertebrates while providing safe mooring for vessels.

• NSW Fisheries is currently drafting a management plan for the Cook Island Aquatic Reserve, which will involve the local community.