Poor Knight Islands DIVE

Weather forecast said today is going to be a cloudy day which means the visibility down there might not be so good. However, this won't ruin our mood for the dive here at Poor Knights Island, known as one of the Top 10 dive site in the world.

After our last dive in Great Barrier Reef, we actually have no plan for another dive in New Zealand as it just so cold in NZ. But we just can't resist to dive again when we know how special this island is. Plus when we hear that it the top 10 best dive site in the world?! Gosh, we are willing to spend that NZD250 for a day's dive!

Here we see the Poor Knight Islands, there are a couple of reason for the name of this island according to our guide. One  very obvious reason: The island looks like a knight with his shield (sideways). Another more legendary: When Captain Cook sail pass this island in November, the island was covered with red flowering rata trees all over in the summer, thus he named the island Poor Knights Island, because it reminds him of the poor knights pudding - as bread got mould, they had no choice but fried it in egg and top with jam, the poor knights' food. =D

As soon as we stopped at our first dive spot, there is a big manta ray swimming below the surface. The instructors were so excited and jumped into the water immediately, while the rest of us get ready asap! The manta ray actually is a kind of fish belongs to coral sea which we wish to see in Great Barrier Reef, but we saw it here instead! Everyone is just so excited and in a matter of a minute probably, it was gone! Oppss...  we only saw it from from the boat =.=

Poor Knight Islands is such an amazing islands, combination of many unique characters in it. It has the LARGEST sea cave in the world which can fit in a Boeing 747, and in winter, the sunlight can lid up the whole cave. In summer time, the whole island will be in red colour as Rata trees will be grow so red and cover the entire island. It just a gift from the God.

Riko Riko Cave (the world largest sea cave), in Maori meaning shimmering/ dancing lights.. As mentioned, in winter the light shining through will lit up the entire cave, so the water reflects on the cave walls and shimmering it! Thus, it's name =)

Looks carefully in the picture and you can see a school of blue fishes hanging around there.

Our first time to dive in cold water, around 20 degrees celcius, that is not easy, we all wore a 7mm thick wet suit to make sure we are warm enough down there, and Peter felt not comfortable for the first dive as the buoyancy is hard to control because of the heavy wet suit. Pete only had a 20 mins dive time as his air got sucked out by the struggling of buoyancy :D So he got back to the boat himself, and of course without wasting time, he jump into the water again, for snorkelling. We saw a lot of fishes even the visibility is average, and no worries of stepping on coral cause the sea floor are covered with sea weed only, the water is too cold for reef to form. 

Though there were no corals here, there are lots of fishes and nudibranch! We also saw yellow and grey morays for the first time! Gosh they look so fierce and big in pictures, we'd never imagined it to be so small in size :D Probably the ones we saw are about 15cm long..

Picture!!!

Our boat cruise pass this great natural sea arch, it is just massive...

Another small sea arch here.

After the first dive, we looked alright in this picture, but actually Peter had just vomit his lunch in the toilet. Oppss.. Certainly not easy to adapt in the cold water.

Before the second dive, our guide took us to tour around the islands, we are just 'wow-ing' for every scene of the island. Then we have a great, long, enjoyable second dive. We see lots of fish again, and we also did an amazing dive into a little dark cave, when we are inside the cave, it is totally dark, then we turn back to see towards the only entrance/exit of the cave, the silhouette lit up by the natural sun rays, shining through a school of fish is just..... amazing.... just incredible!!

Really good dive trip, very different as we are seeing beds of seaweed instead of colorful corals and for the first time exploring sea cave and beautiful nudibranches. If it were not for the cold water, I think we would enjoy it much more =) Really looking forward ti dive in Sipadan Island, Malaysia!