Exploring Hope Point: The Poor Knights Islands

I was hoping for a great dive and things were looking promising. The skipper of the Yukon charter boat was Glenn Edney, the author of the Poor Knights Wonderland diving guide.

We anchored at Hope Point, the most easterly point of Tawhiti Rahi Island and the Poor Knights group.

As I descended, the visibility was disappointing. The rich waters were green with a plankton bloom common in December as the waters warm up. Swimming out towards the point I hoped conditions would improve, but we swam through a thick soup of salps that were tightly packed together it felt like swimming through jelly. I began to ponder how I would take any decent wide angle photographs through this jelly soup!

Descending deeper to 17 metres brought us out of the salps and into clearer water. An impressive, steep wall slung into the depths on the right where a stingray rested on a ledge. A much larger ray glided around the corner and over the kelp towards us. I positioned myself in front of the ray, knowing it would make an ideal subject against the ethereal backdrop. It took flight when it saw me approach, veering off into deeper water – ‘Another time another place’ I thought.

"A thousand fish moved in unison, and then reformed as a single mass...

Rounding the eastern end of Hope Point I was met with true Poor Knight’s magic. Blue water with 30 metres visibility and schools of pink maomao and demoiselles in their thousands surrounding a pinnacle rising from the deep to about 16 metres.
Swimming out to the pinnacle, I crossed over a canyon with a sandy bottom. Far below a school of pink maomao parted to let a lone stingray pass.

I hovered above the top of the pinnacle looking out into the endless blue, hoping for a shark or even a manta ray to come into view - if I was going to see anything like that it would be here! Below me the pinnacle dropped steeply away into dark water and before me just endless blue - nothing until South America.

Suddenly a huge ball of silver swirled before me as a school of trevally in their thousands swam mere metres from where I hovered. As I raised my camera and began photographing them, the sudden flash of my strobe sent the school into panic. I could feel the pulse in the surrounding water as a thousand fish moved in unison, and then reformed as a single mass, coming by for another look.

As the fish moved I had no time to compose a photo, I just had to follow and shoot. I could see why predators had such a hard time picking out one fish from a school like this as every fish moved as one - all copying what its neighbour was doing.

Looking around. three large schools of fish were now layered upon each other; pink maomao at the bottom, demoiselles in the middle and trevally on top. Thousands of fish swam around the pinnacle while the occasional kingfish patrolled through the masses looking for a stray. As suddenly as they had arrived, the trevally disappeared leaving me in awe of their visit.

I descended to the top of the pinnacle for a closer look - a large scorpion fish sat camouflaged on an encrusting reef with amazing biodiversity. Nearby a yellow moray eel snaked its head out of a crack, gulping greedily at the water. Nudibranchs of different colours and sizes were peppered in the sponges, and added to the colour and life on this pinnacle.

Many divers get excited about the variety of colour found in tropical coral reefs but I could not help thinking that if they saw the colours and life decorating the reef walls of New Zealand’s Poor Knights, they would be equally impressed. A painter’s palette of colour made from: sponges of orange, yellow and red, gorgonian fans, purple and pink jewel anemones, and then the greens of algae and yellow of seaweed. Quite spectacular.

I reluctantly left the pinnacle, ascended to shallower depths and swam towards the boat stopping to spend time in Air Bubble Cave. It is a shallow dive site nestled just in from Hope Point. The cave is named after the natural air bubble within the cave that is made when large swells crash into the island trapping air within.Sitting inside the cave I looked out as a school of blue maomao hung by the entrance, and red pigfish swam upside down across the roof of the cave feeding off small animals dislodged by diver's bubbles.

As I made my ascent towards the boat, I promised to come back very soon to dive Hope Point again.

Information on Yukon Charters

Yukon Charters is currently based in Marsden Cove Marina, Ruakaka, New Zealand
Facebook: Facebook.com/YukonDiveCharters
Phone: +64 215611779
Email: info@yukon.co.nz

As of September 2022 Yukon Charters website does not appear to be working.