Ile des Phoques

Ile des Phoques, Freycinet

By ScubaDownUnder Team · 2026-09-29

Ile des Phoques is a small, rugged granite island off Tasmania's east coast, about 8 hectares in area, part of the Schouten Island Group near the Freycinet Peninsula and north of Maria Island. Its French name means Island of Seals, and it still earns it: Tasmania's seal records list the island as a regular haul-out for Australian fur seals, with New Zealand fur seals also recorded there. Underwater, the granite is cut by sea caves and tunnels, several of which run right through the island.

Seals, Then and Now

Sealers worked the island from at least 1805, and Captain James Kelly recorded sealing here during his circumnavigation of Tasmania in 1816. There is historical evidence that the island was once a major breeding colony. Today it is a haul-out rather than a breeding site: the state lists it as a non-breeding roost, and NRE Tasmania notes that most seals at haul-outs are adult and subadult males. Parks and Wildlife Service notes that Australian fur seals were hunted to the brink of extinction, have been slow to recover and are fully protected.

Seals do come into the water here. Reef monitoring divers counting fish at about 10 metres recorded fur seals on their transects in 2006 and again in 2014. Encounters are never guaranteed, and NRE Tasmania warns that seals are wild animals that may bite, so let them set the distance.

The island itself is a nature reserve. Little penguins, short-tailed shearwaters, fairy prions and common diving-petrels breed on it, and white-bellied sea-eagles have nested there.

Caves and Tunnels

The caves are the island's other draw. Maria Island Cruises, which runs sightseeing cruises past the island from Triabunna, describes them as Tasmania's largest granite sea caves, including the Rainbow Cave, lit by a massive natural skylight. Spirit of Tasmania's 2017 dive guide called Ile des Phoques one of Tasmania's most exciting dives, riddled with caves, several running right through the island. A 2014 photo by Peter Southwood on Wikimedia Commons shows a diver in one of the tunnels.

We found no reliable source for the depths of the caves, so treat any published figure with caution. Caves and tunnels are overhead environments: go only as far as your training and equipment allow, and only in calm conditions.

Marine Life

Reef Life Survey's public data includes monitoring transects at about 10 metres off the island from 1992 to 2006, and a Reef Life Survey count south of the main cave in 2014. The fish recorded include banded morwong, butterfly perch and barber perch, bastard trumpeter and real bastard trumpeter, purple, bluethroat, rosy and senator wrasse, herring cale, toothbrush leatherjackets and longfin pike, with sea sweep, marblefish, Shaw's cowfish and longsnout boarfish seen less often. On the rock the surveys found southern rock lobster, blacklip abalone, long-spined and purple sea urchins, orange feather stars and red bait crabs. Visibility logged on those surveys ranged from 5 to 18 metres.

Maria Island Cruises also tells passengers to watch for common and bottlenose dolphins, and for humpback and southern right whales passing along the east coast in the migration season.

Rules and Conduct

The waters around Ile des Phoques are not among the marine reserves listed by Parks and Wildlife Service, but the island is a nature reserve and a seal haul-out, so stay off it. NRE Tasmania's seal-watching guidelines ask boats not to approach closer than 100 metres to a seal colony in November and December, the pupping season, or 50 metres at other times of year, to slow below 10 knots within 200 metres and 5 knots within 100 metres, and never to land at a seal colony. Do not feed seals or leave rubbish.

DAN puts Tasmanian water at about 13 to 18°C year-round and recommends a drysuit or a full 7 mm wetsuit.

Site Access and Logistics

Ile des Phoques is an offshore, boat-only dive with no shore access, and as an exposed island in the Tasman Sea it can only be dived when the weather allows. In October 2026 Go Dive Tasmania listed a scheduled boat-dive day to the island departing Triabunna at 8 am on 1 November, open to all certification levels with an 18 metre limit; check its boat-dives page for current dates or ask about a private charter. On its boat dives Go Dive requires at least Open Water certification and a surface marker buoy for every diver. Maria Island Cruises visits the island on its sightseeing cruise from Triabunna, but that is not a dive trip.

Nearby, the Troy D wreck lies off Maria Island, and Governor Island Marine Reserve is further north at Bicheno. For more, see Best Places to Dive in Tasmania and Sea Lions and Fur Seals in Australia.

Sources

- Wikipedia: Ile des Phoques - NRE Tasmania: Seal Watching Guidelines - Land Tasmania LIST: Fur seal haul-out or colony (PWS Oil Spill Response Atlas) - Parks and Wildlife Service Tasmania: Marine reserves - Parks and Wildlife Service Tasmania: Governor Island Marine Reserve visitor guide (PDF) - Reef Life Survey via AODN: survey list, Ile des Phoques sites - Reef Life Survey via AODN: fish counts, Ile des Phoques sites - Reef Life Survey via AODN: invertebrate counts, Ile des Phoques sites - Maria Island Cruises: Maria Island and Ile des Phoques - Spirit of Tasmania: Tasmania's Top Five Places to Dive (2017) - Wikimedia Commons: Tunnel at Ile des Phoques, by Peter Southwood (2014) - Go Dive Tasmania: Boat Dives - DAN Alert Diver: Tasmania (Brandon Cole, 2015)

Header photo: Ile des Phoques seen from the north, by Liam2520, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.