Underwater Safaris Narooma

Underwater Safaris operates from Narooma on the New South Wales far south coast, providing access to Montague Island — one of the most reliable seal-diving destinations in Australia.

Montague sits about nine kilometres offshore and supports a substantial Australian and New Zealand fur seal population. The encounters are genuinely interactive: young seals approach divers directly, mirror their movements, blow bubble rings and repeatedly loop back, and they will keep doing it as long as the diver stays still and does not pursue.

That last point is the whole technique. Seals engage with divers who hold position and ignore those who chase. Dives are shallow, which suits the interaction well — the animals are most active in the top ten metres and long bottom times are easy.

Beyond the seals, the island offers granite terrain, kelp and temperate reef species, with little penguins and seabird colonies above water. It is a nature reserve and landing requires a permit.

This is cooler, more exposed diving than the NSW coast further north. Water runs roughly fourteen to twenty-one degrees, the crossing is open ocean, and trips are weather-dependent. A seven millimetre suit is sensible, and divers accustomed to Sydney should expect a noticeable step down in temperature.

Worth confirming: certification requirements, which are generally modest given the shallow depths but worth checking; trip frequency and seasonality, since a small operation on the far south coast does not run daily year-round; equipment hire availability and sizing; and whether training is offered. Humpback whales pass during migration, and seal activity varies through the year — worth asking what is happening around your dates.

Montague Island is a nature reserve and landing requires a permit, so the trip is a boat dive rather than an island visit unless arranged separately. The seals are the reason to go, and the technique that works is simply to stay still and let them come to you.