There is a particular kind of hesitation that comes over people at the edge of a marine sanctuary. You are standing at Ricketts Point with a mask in your hand, and there is a sign explaining that this is a protected area, and some part of your brain quietly asks: am I actually supposed to be here?
It is a fair question, and the answer is a genuinely lovely one.
Yes. You are absolutely supposed to be here. You do not need a permit, you do not need to sign up, and it will not cost you a cent.
Victoria's marine protected areas were designed from the very beginning to be places people visit. Diving, snorkelling and swimming are not grudgingly tolerated in these waters - they are among the specific reasons the parks exist. The restrictions are real and they matter, but they are almost entirely about what you take out, not whether you go in.
This is a guide to the protected places in and around Port Phillip Bay: what each one holds, what the rules actually say, and how to go and see them.
What Happened in 2002
After eleven years of investigation, consultation and a fair bit of public argument, Victoria did something in 2002 that no other place in the world had quite managed. It established a complete representative system of highly protected marine areas in a single act of legislation - not one park at a time, but a whole network covering every major marine habitat type along the coast.
The result was 13 marine national parks and 11 marine sanctuaries, which came into effect in November of that year. Together they cover roughly 63,000 hectares, about 5.3 per cent of Victoria's state marine waters.
The distinction between the two categories is mostly about scale rather than strictness. Marine national parks are the large ones. Marine sanctuaries are smaller - all eleven of them together add up to less than 900 hectares - and tend to protect one particular special place rather than a broad sweep of coast. The rules that apply inside them are essentially the same.
Four of these protected areas sit in Port Phillip Bay itself, with several more close enough to be a comfortable day trip.
The One Rule That Matters
If you remember nothing else, remember this: these are no-take areas, not no-go areas.
Look at everything. Photograph everything. Touch nothing, and take nothing home.
That single idea covers about ninety per cent of the regulations. Everything else is detail.
What is prohibited
- All fishing, by every method, from shore or boat. Line fishing, netting, traps, bait collecting, spearfishing - all of it, everywhere inside the boundary.
- Taking or killing any marine life. No abalone, no crayfish, no shellfish, no scallops. Not even one.
- Collecting anything at all. This includes empty shells, interesting rocks, and pieces of driftwood. If it was in the park, it stays in the park.
- Damaging or removing artefacts. The shipwrecks in these waters are heritage-listed. Look, photograph, leave alone.
- Damaging plants, including seaweed and seagrass. This is where careless finning quietly becomes a rules problem as well as an etiquette one.
- Feeding wildlife.
The penalties are not symbolic. Fishing offences inside a marine national park or sanctuary carry a maximum of 100 penalty units, six months imprisonment, or both. At the 2026-27 Victorian penalty unit value of $209.10, that maximum works out to $20,910 for an individual. Parks Victoria and Fisheries officers do patrol these areas, and prosecutions do happen.
What is welcomed
- Scuba diving and snorkelling
- Swimming
- Boating, kayaking and canoeing
- Surfing and bodyboarding
- Underwater photography and video
- Rockpooling and exploring intertidal platforms
- Birdwatching and nature observation
Notice that this list includes essentially everything a recreational diver actually wants to do.
So How Do I Sign Up?
You don't. This surprises people often enough that it deserves its own heading.
There is no permit, no booking, no registration and no fee for recreational diving or snorkelling in any Victorian marine national park or marine sanctuary. You park the car, you walk down to the water, and you go diving. That is the whole process.
The only people who need paperwork are businesses. Any operator running a commercial trip - a dive charter, a guided snorkel tour, a training course run for profit - needs a Parks Victoria Licensed Tour Operator licence. There are over 500 licensed operators across Victoria. If you book a boat dive to Popes Eye or Portsea Hole, your charter holds that licence, and the permission question is handled entirely on their side. You just turn up.
Research and scientific collection is the other exception, requiring a specific permit under the National Parks Act. Unless you are a marine biologist planning to take samples, this will never affect you.
The Places Themselves
Port Phillip Heads Marine National Park (3,580 ha)
This is the big one, and it is genuinely world class. It is not a single continuous area but six separate pieces scattered around the southern end of the bay, each protecting something quite different.
The geology underneath it is remarkable. During the last ice age, when sea levels were far lower, the Yarra River flowed out across the plain that is now Port Phillip Bay and cut a steep gorge through soft rock near the southern end. That gorge is now flooded, and its western side is what divers know as Lonsdale Wall - a kilometre of overhangs, canyons and ledges dropping from around 8 metres to 25 and beyond, encrusted in sponges, soft corals, gorgonians and hydroids. Blue devilfish, leatherjackets, sea sweep and the occasional wobbegong live in the water movement there. It is advanced diving, strictly slack water, strictly from a boat, and it is the reason a lot of people took up diving in Victoria in the first place.
Portsea Hole is the same story from a different angle - a sunken remnant of that ancient river channel sitting in the middle of a vast sand plain about a kilometre north-west of Portsea Pier. It covers only about 10 hectares, marked at its corners by four lit yellow buoys, with depths from 12 to 32 metres and walls covered in sponge and soft coral. Boat access only, slack water only, experienced divers only.
Popes Eye is the one to fall in love with. It is a circular basalt annulus under 100 metres across, built in the 1870s as a gun emplacement to defend Melbourne from a naval threat that never materialised. The work was abandoned unfinished, and the sea moved in. The ring is open to the north for about a third of its circumference, which lets small boats slip inside and anchor in shelter. Around 9 metres deep on its southern side, protected from the worst of the tidal flow, it is friendly enough for snorkellers and beginner divers while still holding an Australasian Gannet colony above the waterline and dense fish life below. It was given protection in 1979, long before the 2002 system existed, as part of the reserve named for Harold Holt - the prime minister who disappeared while swimming at Cheviot Beach, inside what is now this same park.
A tip worth knowing at Popes Eye: the best visibility usually comes at the end of the flood tide, when clean Bass Strait water has been drawn in through the Heads. On an ebb tide, dive the southern aspect. On a flood, work the northern half.
Point Lonsdale is the section most accessible from shore, and the friendliest. The Springs is a shallow reef system running 300-odd metres out from the beach with wobbegongs resting under its ledges and sea nymph meadows to drift across. Point Lonsdale Light, reached along the beach from the lighthouse car park, is about as gentle an introduction to Victorian marine life as exists - juvenile blue groper in summer, blue-throat wrasse, moonlighters, scalyfin, magpie morwong, and water that is nearly always clear. Glaneuse Reef dries out on the ebb into a series of rock pools that are perfect for a first snorkel.
Point Nepean holds shallow sandstone reefs full of deep undercuts, where Port Jackson sharks shelter in large numbers during the breeding season - which, as of right now in September, is exactly what is happening. Note carefully: shore diving is prohibited at Point Nepean. These sites are boat access only.
Swan Bay and Mud Islands are the quiet two. Both are Ramsar-listed wetlands of international significance. Swan Bay's seagrass meadows are lovely, shallow snorkelling and superb for kayaking. Mud Islands is a bird place more than a dive place, reachable only by boat.
Ricketts Point Marine Sanctuary (115 ha)
Twenty minutes from the city at Beaumaris, reachable by public transport, and mostly shallower than five metres. Sandstone reefs, sea caves, rock pools and seagrass beds sitting on the traditional Sea Country of the Bunurong People.
For a sanctuary this close to a major city the species list is startling: ornate cowfish, dragonets, cryptic weedfish, pygmy leatherjackets, southern hulafish, Victorian scalyfin, red and dusky morwong, Port Jackson sharks, banjo sharks, smooth rays, octopus, squid and cuttlefish. Around 75 bird species use the area. Bottlenose dolphins pass through, and humpback whales move past on migration between June and August.
This is the best sanctuary in Melbourne for a first snorkel, and one of the easiest places in the city to introduce someone to the idea that Port Phillip Bay is full of life.
Jawbone Marine Sanctuary (30 ha)
Small, and close enough to Williamstown station to walk. What makes Jawbone remarkable is that it squeezes examples of every marine habitat type found in northern Port Phillip into thirty hectares - saltmarsh, mangroves, rocky reef, seagrass and sandy beach, all in one place.
It holds the largest stand of mangroves in Port Phillip Bay. Weedy seadragons, pipefish, southern fiddler rays and nudibranchs live here. Red-necked stints arrive from Alaska and Siberia. There is a boardwalk with gravel paths suitable for most prams and wheelchairs, which makes this one of the few genuinely accessible marine protected areas in the state.
Two local cautions: blue-ringed octopus are present in the rocky areas, and there are snakes in the long grass on the walk in. Neither is a reason to stay away, both are a reason to watch where you put your hands and feet.
Point Cooke Marine Sanctuary (290 ha)
The largest of Victoria's eleven marine sanctuaries, about 20 kilometres south-west of the city, where basalt cliffs drop away below the waterline into sandy beaches, rocky reef and mudflats. Internationally significant for migratory wader birds.
For divers the draw is two heritage-listed shipwrecks, the Henrietta and the Diane, both shallow enough to be explored by snorkellers as well as divers. Head out from the homestead area to find seagrass beds threaded through rocky reef. Tube worms, anemones, urchins, sponges, small sharks and rays, southern blennies and pipefish. Bottlenose dolphins turn up, and in late summer so do jellyfish, sometimes in swarms.
Point Cooke has also become one of the front lines in the effort to deal with Port Phillip Bay's urchin problem, and has hosted culling trials aimed at letting kelp recover on overgrazed reef.
Worth the drive: two more nearby
Mushroom Reef Marine Sanctuary (80 ha) at Flinders, on Western Port rather than Port Phillip, protects what is considered the most diverse intertidal rocky reef community in Victoria. Go at low tide and simply walk it - the rock platform does most of the work for you.
Barwon Bluff Marine Sanctuary (17 ha) at Barwon Heads is tiny but holds sandstone and basalt reef with giant kelp and bull kelp, plus two shipwrecks. Worth combining with a Point Lonsdale trip.
The Rules That Catch Divers Out
Most of the regulations are intuitive. These few are not, and they are the ones worth committing to memory.
| Rule | What it means in practice |
|---|---|
| Dive flag buoy is mandatory | In all Victorian state waters, a diver must tow a buoy attached by a rope, carrying a dive flag of at least 300mm x 200mm. This applies everywhere, not just in parks, and is frequently ignored. It shouldn't be - the Heads carry heavy boat traffic. |
| No shore diving at Point Nepean | The Nepean Bay sites are boat access only. Shore entry there is prohibited. |
| The Heads are a designated hazardous area | Additional safety requirements apply, including mandatory wearing of lifejackets on vessels. This is a legal requirement, not a recommendation. |
| No anchoring in shipping channels | Prohibited outright. Anchoring anywhere around Port Phillip Heads is generally not advised given the tidal flow. Steer well clear of channels and their approaches. |
| Empty shells count as "taking" | The souvenir shell in your BCD pocket is technically an offence. Photograph it instead. |
| Dogs are mostly not permitted | Point Lonsdale is the exception within Port Phillip Heads, and there they must stay leashed. |
Getting There
From shore, the accessible sanctuary diving is at Ricketts Point, Jawbone, Point Cooke, and the Point Lonsdale sites - The Springs, Point Lonsdale Light, the township reef and Glaneuse Reef. All are free, none require booking, and most are shallow enough to snorkel.
By charter, boats run to Popes Eye, Portsea Hole, Lonsdale Wall and the Nepean sites from Sorrento, Portsea and Queenscliff. This is the simplest way to reach the deeper sites, and the operator carries the licence, the local knowledge and the tidal timing. For Lonsdale Wall and Nepean Reef in particular, going with a charter that dives them regularly is worth far more than saving the money.
In your own boat, there are ramps at Rye, Sorrento and Queenscliff. Be honest with yourself about the Heads. Conditions there change fast, slack water at Nepean Reef can last anywhere from a few minutes to over half an hour, and the guide published by Parks Victoria notes plainly that several dive boats have been overturned by large swells near Sweep Reef over the years. Build an exit strategy for the boat as well as the divers.
Whatever the approach, plan around the tide. Almost every site in the Heads has a preferred tidal state, and getting it wrong turns a beautiful dive into an unpleasant one. Our guide to reading bay visibility covers how flood and ebb affect water clarity, which matters as much here as current does.
Diving These Places Well
Parks Victoria asks a few specific things of divers, and all of them are simply good practice anywhere.
- Watch your fins. A careless kick over a sponge garden undoes decades of growth in a second. Sponges and gorgonians are slow-growing colonial animals, not plants, and they do not bounce back.
- Secure your gauges and octopus. Dangling hoses dragging across reef cause more damage than most divers realise.
- Get your buoyancy sorted before you dive a sponge wall. Lonsdale Wall is not the place to be practising.
- Check, Clean, Dry. Rinse and dry boats and gear before moving between locations to avoid spreading marine pests between sites. Port Phillip has enough introduced species already.
- Anchor carefully, never drag. Use moorings where they exist.
- Dress for the water, not the weather. Bay temperatures fall to around 8°C in winter at the Heads. Even in spring you want proper thermal protection.
Why It's Worth Caring About
It is easy to read a list of restrictions and see only the restrictions. But spend a bit of time in these places and the point becomes obvious in a way no regulation can convey.
Swim over a reef inside a sanctuary and then swim over comparable reef outside one, and the difference in fish size and abundance is often something you can simply see. The big blue groper at Merlan Inner Reef, the crayfish sitting openly under ledges, the plate-sized green-lip abalone grazing on rock faces in plain view - those animals are there in numbers because for twenty-four years nobody has been allowed to take them.
Victoria protected 5.3 per cent of its state waters in 2002 and left the other 94.7 per cent available for fishing and harvest. That is a modest ask, and what it bought is a handful of places where a Melbourne diver can see what this coastline looked like before we started taking things from it.
No permit, no fee, no sign-up sheet. Just a mask, a tide table, and a bit of care with your fins.
Rules and boundaries can change. Before diving, check current information at parks.vic.gov.au or call Parks Victoria on 13 1963.