Poor Knights Islands
The greatest dive on Earth might be in our backyard.
Two main islands and a scatter of smaller islets and rock stacks.
The Poor Knights are the remains of ancient volcanoes. They sit 22 km (about 14 miles) off the Tutukaka Coast, halfway between Bream Head and Cape Brett.
- Tawhiti RahiThe larger main island, about 151 ha.
- AorangiThe second main island, about 101 ha, to the south.
- AorangaiaA smaller island close to Aorangi.
- Archway IslandNamed for the sea arch worn through it.
- Motu KapitiA small outlying islet in the group.
- Bird RockA bare rock stack, a perch for seabirds.
- Kaka RockOne of the rock stacks around the main islands.
- Ngoio RockAnother stack rising straight out of the blue.
What makes an island an island and not just a rock? The way we tell it on the boat: if it’s got vegetation growing on it — a tree on top — it’s an island. Bare rock? Just a rock.
Warm currents, volcanic arches, walls of fish.
The East Auckland Current wraps these old volcanoes in warm, clear subtropical water. The result is an underwater world found nowhere else in Aotearoa — sheer cliffs and tunnels, sponge gardens, and arches packed so thick with fish the light goes blue.
The biggest sea cave in the southern hemisphere.
Rikoriko is the largest sea cave by volume in the Southern Hemisphere. It’s about 130 m long and 80 m wide, with a ceiling 35 m high.
Below the waterline it drops another 26 m. It’s hard to picture the size of it until you’re looking up from the entrance.
Jacques Cousteau rated the Poor Knights among the top ten dives in the world. He’d seen most of the planet’s oceans, so that means a lot. Every time we roll off the boat here, we get why.
Two warships on the sand.
Off Tutukaka, two retired New Zealand navy ships were sunk on purpose as artificial reefs. Both are now covered in life.
A former navy hydrographic research ship. Scuttled on 20 February 1999, she sits in about 32 m.
A 113 m Leander-class frigate. Scuttled on 25 November 2000, she sits in about 28 m.
To be honest, they’re deep for freediving. We freedive over the wrecks and the reef life on top. Going inside is for scuba divers.
A breath-hold in a living cathedral.
We run guided freedive trips out from the Tutukaka Coast — a short boat ride to the islands, then drift the arches and walls on a single breath. Best for certified freedivers, or as the goal you train toward on a course with us.
Winter brings glassy 30 m-plus visibility; summer brings the plankton and the life it feeds. Either way, you surface changed.
Sacred islands, left to the sea.
For centuries the Poor Knights were home to Ngātiwai. Hundreds lived on Tawhiti Rahi and Aorangi — terraced gardens, kāinga, kumara in the volcanic soil, the moana as the pantry.
Around the 1820s, while the men were away, a raiding party struck and the island people were lost. In their grief, the surviving chief laid the islands under tapu. No one has lived there since.
That tapu still holds. No one lands on the islands to this day — they belong to the seabirds, the tuatara, and the sea. Ngātiwai remain their guardians. We only ever visit the water.
Dive the Poor Knights with us.
Tell us your experience level and we’ll find you the right trip — or the course that gets you there.