On the weekend 15th oct-16th oct, Hazel and I dived the poor knights with our local dive club, the Botany Bottom Scratchers. We arrived on friday night, had dinner at the Killer Prawn restaurant in Whangerei (who do the best blue scotch fillet I've had in my life, I might add), then left fairly early to get plenty of rest before a big day of diving.
The following morning, we boarded Yukon Charters vessel, loaded our gear onboard, and by 9:30am were making our way to the infamous Poor Knights islands, situated some 7nm off the coast of Tutukaka. Our first dive of the day was a rock pinnacle, but unfortunately due to an algae bloom, the vis wasn't too crash hot. However, upon surfacing, we spotted a few seals out hunting! During our journey to the next dive spot, we made a slight detour to where the seals normally congregate. Only two were spotted, but it was the first time I'd seen them in the wild.
Our second dive was at Blue Mao Mao Arch. There were more fish here than the last spot, and we managed to find a stingray (not common for this time of year), a few blue mao mao, the usual cheeky sandagers wrasse, leatherjackets and demoiselles.
The following day, our first dive location was northern arch. If you are ever thinking of diving in the poor knights, make sure you go here. We snorkelled to the arch, descended to around 26 meters (that's around 85 feet for the yanks and poms reading this), and began to spelunk. after spotting a few scorpionfish, beatiful sponges and other unidentified fish, we made our way out of the arch, closely exploring the wall outside of the arch. We found a small cave at around 10 meters (33 feet), which we were able to put our heads up into and talk to each other. After a bit of lunch, some more exploring the coast on the kayaks, and more lunch, we made our way back to the harbour to dive the waikato wreck.
The HMNZS Waikato is a purpose-sunk vessel situated just outside the Tutukaka harbour, sitting on its port side, still mostly intact. Due to the poor vis it wasn't terribly easy to see its entire size, however it was still an excellent dive. While down there we met a few tech-divers - you know the sort; twin tanks, white suits, and really neat torches that have blue light in a very narrow beam; found plenty of deep dark holes inside the wreck to penetrate, etc. It was rather cold though; according to my computer, it was 11 degrees celcius at 25 meters. Not quite as tropical as would have been hoped, but still fantastic diving.
I took a short video with my digital still camera, a Sony DSC-W7. It's not the best quality, but it gives you an idea of what it's like down there on the Waikato. You can get it here.