Skeleton Bay reef-shark nursery

A 20-minute beach walk north along Bill’s Bay reaches Skeleton Bay, where the shallows act as a nursery for juvenile reef sharks. Between roughly October and March, blacktip, whitetip and the odd lemon shark gather in water often no deeper than your shins — up to around 200 small sharks at a time, on a beach where they have been recorded as far back as the 1920s.

It is completely free and self-guided, and one of Coral Bay’s most distinctive wildlife moments. The young sharks are wary and easily spooked, so it is a watch-quietly-from-the-shallows experience inside a no-take sanctuary zone.