Governor Island Marine Reserve

Governor Island Marine Reserve, Bicheno

By ScubaDownUnder Team · 2026-08-28

Governor Island Marine Reserve sits just off Bicheno on Tasmania's east coast, and the Parks and Wildlife Service describes it as one of the best temperate diving locations in Australia. Declared in 1991, it was one of Tasmania's first marine reserves, and the whole reserve is a fully protected no-take area. Divers come for granite walls, swim-throughs and boulder reefs covered in sponges, sea whips and yellow zoanthids, and for fish such as longsnout boarfish, which are rare on fished coasts but common here.

Governor Island is a pair of small granite islands, about 2 hectares in all, separated from the town by Waubs Gulch, a channel about 50 metres wide. The reserve takes in the island and the waters and rocks to its east, out to about 400 metres; the Parks map shows Bird Rock and Alligator Rock inside it.

The Dive Sites

Parks counts more than 35 recognised dive sites in the reserve. Its visitor guide highlights three: the Hairy Wall, a granite cliff face that drops to 35 metres and is covered in sea whips; the Castle, two huge granite boulders pressed together with a swim-through lined with sea whips and yellow zoanthids and full of bullseyes, cardinalfish, banded morwong and rock lobster; and the Golden Bommies, two 10 metre pinnacles glowing with yellow zoanthids.

50 Great Dives names Magic Garden as the premier scuba site: it lies at the base of a series of vertical walls that start in shallow water and reach 38 metres, with tunnels lined with colourful invertebrates. It also lists Hedge Hog, Paradise Reef, Mr Whippy, the Castle, the Hairy Wall and the Golden Bommies. Spirit of Tasmania's 2017 dive guide picked out the Rose Garden, a mass of broken boulders covered in sea whips, large sponges and jewel anemones, as a favourite with local divers.

The Golden Bommies are a deep dive. Writing for DAN's Alert Diver in 2015, Brandon Cole reached the tops of the two bommies at about 27 metres on nitrox and touched down at about 38 metres. On the same trip he dived Bird Rock, where piled granite boulders form swim-throughs with walls carpeted in jewel anemones.

Marine Life

Bull kelp dominates the wave-washed intertidal, with strapweed and crayweed on the shallow reefs and common kelp in deeper, calmer water. Below about 20 metres there is too little light for seaweed, and the granite is covered in sponges, sea whips, sea fans, sea tulips, zoanthids, anemones, bryozoans and hydroids.

Parks lists longsnout boarfish, banded morwong, old wife, Shaw's cowfish and schools of butterfly perch as common fish, with bullseyes, cardinalfish and sandpaper fish crowding the caves and the occasional draughtboard shark. Banded morwong, Parks notes, can live for almost 100 years. Southern rock lobster and octopus hide in the cracks. In the cooler months schools of jack mackerel swirl past, sometimes hunted by bottlenose dolphins, which are regularly seen in the reserve. Reef monitoring divers have counted fish at the island since 1992, and the public Reef Life Survey data for the Governor Island sites adds bastard trumpeter, herring cale, longfin pike, marblefish and purple, bluethroat and senator wrasse.

Australian fur seals sometimes haul out on Alligator Rock, inside the reserve, and 50 Great Dives describes dolphins, seals and whales as regular visitors to Bicheno's waters. Parks notes that the Australian fur seal is the fourth-rarest seal in the world: hunted to the brink of extinction, it has been slow to recover and is fully protected. Above water, Governor Island has Tasmania's largest colony of crested terns. For more on our seals, see Sea Lions and Fur Seals in Australia.

Conditions

Parks warns that the waters around Governor Island are deep and subject to strong currents and swells. It recommends diving here only for experienced divers with good local knowledge, or under the leadership of an experienced guide. 50 Great Dives rates the reserve as an advanced dive, with Deep Diver training recommended for Magic Garden, and gives depths of 6 to 38 metres.

Winter brings the best visibility, up to 30 metres, but the water is 11 to 14°C. In summer it can reach 20°C, though plankton blooms often reduce visibility. DAN recommends a drysuit or a full 7 mm wetsuit for diving in Tasmania. Bicheno is sheltered from the south-westerlies common in southern Australia and the island blocks most other winds, which 50 Great Dives says makes it an almost year-round dive location.

Reserve Rules

Fishing and all other extractive activities are prohibited anywhere in the reserve, which is patrolled, and heavy penalties apply for fishing or interfering with marine life. Do not swim, snorkel or dive in Waubs Gulch, which has frequent boat traffic and strong currents. Landing on Governor Island is prohibited from 1 August to 31 March while the crested terns breed.

Parks asks divers to secure gauges and equipment close to the body, keep good buoyancy control and not grip the reef for support. Boats should avoid anchoring on sponge gardens and seagrass, and drop anchor on sand or, failing that, kelp-covered reef. Boats must not exceed 5 knots within 120 metres of a dive flag and should keep at least 100 metres away from one, so fly a flag over your divers.

Site Access and Logistics

Bicheno is about two and a half hours' drive from Hobart or Launceston. The reserve is a boat dive, about five minutes from the Bicheno boat ramp, and Parks says it is best reached with a commercial operator or a private boat.

We could not confirm a dive operator running scheduled boat dives into the reserve in October 2026. Bicheno Dive Centre, named in older guides, no longer has a working website, and for diving, Discover Tasmania's Bicheno page now links only to a guided shore dive at Waubs Bay run by Dive Under Tasmania, which starts with a gear check at its Launceston dive shop. Go Dive Tasmania in Hobart is the dive service 50 Great Dives names for this dive, but its regular boat dives leave from the Tasman Peninsula, so ask it directly about Bicheno trips.

For an easier dive, Waubs Bay in the town has at least six shore dives, with weedy seadragons, big-bellied seahorses, boarfish, butterfly perch and nudibranchs, and DAN's writer found seadragons there on a night dive. Parks suggests Waubs Bay or Rice Pebble Beach for snorkelling, and 50 Great Dives recommends the Bicheno wave deflection wall.

For more of the state's diving, see Best Places to Dive in Tasmania and, further south on the east coast, Ile des Phoques.

Sources

- Parks and Wildlife Service Tasmania: Governor Island Marine Reserve visitor guide (PDF) - Parks and Wildlife Service Tasmania: Marine reserves - Parks and Wildlife Service Tasmania: Snorkelling and scuba diving - 50 Great Dives: Governor Island Marine Reserve - DAN Alert Diver: Tasmania (Brandon Cole, 2015) - Spirit of Tasmania: Tasmania's Top Five Places to Dive (2017) - Discover Tasmania: Bicheno - Discover Tasmania: Personalised Guided Dive at Waubs Bay, Bicheno - Reef Life Survey via AODN: survey list, Bicheno and Governor Island sites - Reef Life Survey via AODN: fish counts, Bicheno and Governor Island sites - Wikipedia: Governor Island (Tasmania)

Header photo: Yellow zoanthids (Parazoanthus sp.) at Governor Island, Bicheno, by Peter Southwood, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.