In January 2011 Mary and I travelled to Tutukaka near Whangarei on the north island of New Zealand. This is the base from which Dive!Tutukaka, NZ’s largest dive charter operator, runs day trips to the Poor Knights Islands. These islands were rated by Jacques Cousteau as one of the top dives in anywhere and lie 23 kilometres off the north-east coast of NZ. They are warmed by a current that sweeps down from the Coral Sea and on good days the underwater visibility is said to be 30 metres plus.
Mary and I had signed up for a two-dive day at Poor Knights. Conditions looked good and the omens even better. Only 48 hours earlier Bright Arrow, our dive boat, had seen orcas at the islands, we saw a large Stingray in Tutukaka harbour and a pod of dolphins escorted us out to the Poor Knights Islands. This was going to be special.
Actually it was not.
The underwater visibility was just 6 to 8 metres and the orcas had not only left but before doing so, had scared almost all marine life into hiding. Even the resident stingrays. In almost two hours spent underwater I hardly saw any marine life, just blennies, damselfish, nudibranchs and the biggest: a solitary scorpionfish. Constant surge did not improve my mood either! If the diving had not been hyped up so much I would have been reasonably content but having read that we were going to enjoy “one of the top ten dive sites in the world” it was difficult not to feel disappointed.