Anchor Bommie

The west side of the island is scattered bommies and a wreck on a sandy bottom, running 5 to 21 metres, and Anchor Bommie is one of the sites the dive staff rate most highly. The coral head has its base at around 19 metres and its top at 14, so you drop down the line, work the bommie and come up it as the dive goes on. The anchor that names it lies beside the coral, a large Admiralty pattern grown over with soft corals.

The head is an important manta cleaning station, which is what the rays are doing when they turn up. What holds most divers, though, is the small stuff: permanent colonies of cleaner shrimp and anemone shrimp, Durban hinge-beaked shrimp, anthias that have moved into the coral, and the rare purple leafy scorpionfish. Feather stars cover the soft and hard coral on the bommie itself.

Off the coral the sand carries its own life. A large shovel-nosed ray often rests there and can be approached as it lies, and a family of garden eels sways out of the sand nearby. The island is inside the Green Zone of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, the highest classification the park authority designates, so the anchor and everything on it stays where it is.