The Poor Knights Islands are a group of small rocky islands on the eastern coast of the Northern Island of New Zealand.

Jacques Cousteau

They are famous for their cold water reefs, the excellent visibility and the diversity of marine life. It was one of the favourite dive destinations of the late Jacques Cousteau.

Tutukaka

There are a total of 60 different dive sites around the islands. The easiest way to get to the Poor Knights Islands, is by boarding a dive boat from the tiny town Tutukaka. It is not directly the easiest place to get to, but if you are travelling around New Zealand in a campervan (like most people do) it is easy enough.

Tutukaka is a really small village consisting of a few houses, a hostel and a proper camping site. In the small Marina, you can find a couple of dive schools. The largest one is called Dive! Tutukaka and is run by a Dutchmen who immigrated into New Zealand.

Dive! Tutukaka

This dive school is definitely state of the art, with a very modern dive boat and nice equipment. If you go diving here, make sure that you try your wetsuits on before you go on the boat. There is no spare gear on the boat and the waters are very cold. So if your wetsuit does not fit properly, you’ll be freezing cold. Usually their guess of your size is good, but make sure to be on the safe side.

The crew is very professional, able to give you a lot of information about the marine reserve and you dive in small groups.

Cold water diving

We were here in July 2004, midwinter in New Zealand. You can still dive then, with a 7 mm double wetsuit. The waters are only 12-15 degrees Celsius, but the visibility is more than 20 metres. At wintertime there are regular storms, so the dive boat does not depart every day. It also depends on the weather and the direction of the storms, which dive sites you can visit on a certain day.

Gentle Forest / Bradys Corner

At the Gentle Forest and Bradys Corner you’ll find some relatively small kelp forests that harbour a lot of marine life. The depth is not much more than 17 metres and you can see northern Scorpio fish, John Dory, black angelfish, mado, nudybranches, sandager’s wrasse, Lord Howe coral fish and demoiselle.

The Gardens

The Gardens is a little deeper (20 metres or over) and has a lot of funny rock formations full of little caves. In these caves you can find grey and speckled moray eels. Furthermore, there are a lot of smaller and larges schools of fish around and you can spot red pigfish as well.