The wreck of the Fiji, just offshore Moonlight Head in south-west Victoria, finally has heritage protection along with the memorial to the 11 sailors who died in the disaster in 1891.

Former abalone diver, Warrnambool's Andrew Coffey, noticed a story in The Standard about the shipwreck and decided it was time to reveal the story behind how the upside down anchor on Wreck Beach came to be.

Mr Coffey, now 91, said he along with three others had dived to the wreck of the Fiji, and one day in 1964 decided to secure the anchor that had been dragged up onto the beach.

Mr Coffey - with the help of some of his fellow divers - used gelignite to blow a hole in the rock on the shore and fixed the anchor in upside down with a full bag of cement.

"I'm the only one left that was mixed up with that anchor," he said. "We did a good job because it's been there a long, long time."

The divers had carved their names in the concrete and rock but he said that had long since been washed away by the ocean and time.

Mr Coffey also came across the wreck of the WWII Avro Anson plane during one of his dives off Lady Julia Percy Island (Deen Maar).

He, along with his Rotary club, helped establish a memorial at The Crags in honour of the four men who'd died in the tragedy.

"It's dangerous," he said of diving off the coast.

"There's no question about that. The sharks ... up to 20-feet long. Huge things," he said.

"I did see a lot of sharks. Only two looked as though they were going to bite me in half."