Next Stop: Somewhere Else: Poor Knights Islands

Craig:

The Poor Knights Islands sit off the east coast of the North Island about twenty kilometers offshore. There are two main islands and many other smaller islands that make up the chain of protected marine reserve. The islands themselves are very unique in that they have no foreign intruders such as rats, possums, etc. to disturb the native animals and plants. The only people allowed on the island are scientists and Department of Conservation workers. The Poor Knights are often seen in the top ten diving destinations in the world due to their abundance of sea life and thick kelp forests. Stingrays, eels, turtles, large snapper, and bottlenose dolphins are all year round residents of the waters surrounding the islands. Bridget and I got to see most of these creatures on our dive and snorkel trip to the islands.

Since Bridget is not certified to dive, she elected to still go and snorkel. We started out the day on the dive boat with a safety talk and were soon on our way out of the harbor. Just as we were coming out, a pod of bottlenose dolphins came up right beside the boat. The captain stopped the boat and we just sat there for a while watching them. The dolphins were so curious of us that they hung around so our captain told us to jump in and swim with them. Everybody scrambled to get snorkels and masks. We jumped in the cold water without wetsuits and got to swim with wild bottlenose dolphins. I have seen plenty of dolphins but these were huge. They would swim right by us, sometimes within an arm’s reach. Very cool!

Swimming with the gigantic bottlenose dolphins.

We went to two dive spots over the day. Each one was filled with sea life. We got to see a couple huge stingrays. One of them had a span of about six feet. I was able to swim in and out of the kelp forests seeing interesting fish and creatures around every kelp plant. I wish I would have had a spear gun because the huge snapper would have been easy pickings (but I didn’t have one and fishing is illegal there anyway). They call it “subtropical” diving but I beg to differ. Any water where you need a 7mm wetsuit to dive in is far from “subtropical.”

As we were driving over to our second spot of the day we drove into Rikoriko, the world’s largest sea cave (determined by some university students measuring the volume of it with lasers). We drove to the back of the cave and hung out for a while. The top of the cave is covered in ferns that actually grow upside down because the water seeps through the ground above them and they get their sunlight from it reflecting upwards off the water.

World's largest sea cave: Rikoriko

After our last dive, we were supposed to drive around the islands to see some of the arches and caves on the other side but our dolphin experience in the morning had put us behind schedule. We headed back to the harbor and had a look at all the pictures. Here are some of the pictures of the day: