The Nursery

Every dive at Julian Rocks is a boat dive, and The Nursery is the protected shallow end of the island — the site the local dive centre works most often. You drop onto a bottom that sits between 5 and 12 m and stays there, so depth never becomes the limiting factor on the dive. It is the ground used for new divers, and snorkellers work the same rock from the surface while a group is down.

The draw is density rather than depth. More than 500 different species of fish have been recorded on this ground, and a large share of what you see is juvenile: small, unbothered, tucked into the shelter of the rock. Covering distance matters less than working slowly along one patch, which will usually hold several species at once if you stop long enough to separate them.

Turtles are the other reason to book it. Green, hawksbill and loggerhead turtles all use this ground as shelter and as a feeding area, and they are resident rather than seasonal. Because the water is shallow there is no depth pressure to move on, so you can stay with one animal as long as it tolerates you and still finish the dive with gas in hand.