Rip Bank

Meet the site

Rip Bank is the most exposed of the Heads walls and, for many Victorian divers, the most dramatic. The Scuba Doctor listing calls it 'a fantastic underwater cliff just outside Port Phillip Heads on the south-east side', with large overhangs and 'beautiful colours', and a depth range of 16–60 m. It is the seaward face of the Nepean bank where the Rip channel meets Bass Strait, and the flow along the wall 'can be extremely fast' – this is where the tidal exchange of the whole bay accelerates through a gap little more than a kilometre wide.

The wall itself is a sheer face with deep, roofed overhangs at the terrace levels, the rock buried under sponges, zoanthids and soft corals in colours that photographers rate above the Lonsdale side because the water is clearer here. Southern rock lobster sit along the top of the wall in numbers. Southern blue devils occupy the overhangs. The listing singles out the sharpnose sevengill shark – harmless, up to 1.4 m – which divers frequently see swimming 10–15 m off the wall; broadnose sevengills and seals are also seen. Schools of sweep and, in summer, kingfish work the open water.

The conditions are the whole story. The listing states the dive is conducted only on slack water at the end of the flood, and even then only when conditions are calm outside the Heads; the slack itself may be 15–20 minutes. Standing waves form in The Rip whenever swell or wind opposes the ebb, and the entrance is a working shipping lane with pilot boats and the passenger ferry crossing it. Rescue of a diver swept out on the ebb is difficult. For that reason Rip Bank is a site for experienced Heads divers under a skipper who dives the entrance regularly, and it is on the charter schedule only when the tide and weather line up. When they do it is the best wall dive in Victoria.

What you might see

Southern rock lobster, southern blue devil, sharpnose sevengill shark, broadnose sevengill shark, silver sweep, yellowtail kingfish (summer), encrusting sponges, zoanthids, soft corals, gorgonians, Australian fur seal

Location

Underwater cliff on the south-east side of the entrance to Port Phillip, just outside the Heads off Point Nepean, 32 m north of Outer Corsair Wall.