Albany — King George Sound

Charters leave from the Albany Town Marina and run 20 to 40 minutes out into the Sound: 20 minutes to the former HMAS Perth II and Limestone Head, 25 to Willy's Lump, 30 to Herold Reef, 35 to The Fingers and 40 to The Cables. The Perth II is a boat dive only and carries a fixed mooring, and the regional tourism board recommends contacting the local dive shop before diving it. Shore entries inside the Sound — Frenchman Bay, Little Beach, Emu Point and the Murray Road boat ramp — fill in around the charters and carry the night diving.

The ground is limestone. Willy's Lump is a large reef structure averaging 20–25 m, The Caves a smaller complex of stone bommies with swim-throughs to 28 m, and Herold Reef a drowned ancient coastline in 4–16 m. Sponge and coral growth covers the harder structure, the Perth II included, where plaques mark the habitats that have developed on the hull since 2001. South Point is a nursery ground holding thousands of juvenile Old Wife, Bight Redfish, Moonlighter and Breaksea, and Australian sea lions, New Zealand fur seals and dolphins work the islands.

This is temperate diving in Southern Ocean water: the Sound averages 20.5°C in summer and 13.6°C in winter, visibility runs 10–15 m, and swell decides the day more than anything else. Exposed sites such as The Fingers are difficult to anchor on and call for live-boat technique and an SMB, and even the sheltered Cheynes III is out in S–SW winds. The area suits wreck divers and anyone who likes cold-water reef structure and a single, long-established local operator. Divers after coral and warm, clear water should look north to Ningaloo.