The Poor Knights Islands: underwater paradise

Last summer, I returned to the Poor Knights for my third Perfect Day trip. It was six hours of Lou Reed’s song looping blissfully in my head while everyone aboard regularly rushed to the sides of the boat to appreciate sightings of surfacing fish, seabirds and the marvellous blues of the huge Rikoriko Cave.

Don’t expect an island tour; no one is allowed to so much as touch the rocky foreshore. But there is a 100% chance you’ll see two dozen species of colourful fish including full-grown snapper, kingfish and other game fish. Chances of seeing seals and dolphins are also high. 

Exotic species frequently seen in the temperate waters include sea turtles, giant sunfish, manta rays, whales, sharks and, very occasionally, whale sharks. 

The Poor Knights were given their name by Captain Cook who in 1769 described the islands as resembling lumps of a ‘Poor Knight’s supper’, a dessert like bread and butter pudding. There’s another theory that the islands look like a knight lying in repose. 

Around the time of Cook’s visit, Māori began visiting the islands to collect food. After the Ngātiwai colony was decimated by a tribal invasion, the islands became tapu in 1823. Erasing all trace of humans, weeds and wild pigs from the islands intersected with increased interest in diving in the 1970s. Marine reserve status followed in 1998. 

The islands’ reputation was helped hugely when, in 1979, Jacques Cousteau claimed they were one of the best diving sites he'd ever been to. UNESCO put the islands on a tentative World Heritage list in 2007. In 2024, TIME magazine named the Poor Knights one of The World's Greatest Places of 2024 because Dive! Tutukaka made accommodation, staffing and diving inclusive for people with disabilities. 

“The ocean is a great leveller; none of us should be there, and yet we all can be,” Dive! Tutukaka’s owner-operator Kate Malcolm says. 

Like the ocean, Dive! Tutukaka has experienced plenty of swells over the past five years, including the high of the company’s 25th anniversary and the troughs of both co-founders Jeroen Jongejans and Anthony Malcolm dying, Covid lockdowns, Tutukākā Marina being damaged by a tsunami and Northland’s main highway route being closed off after Cyclone Gabrielle and making the journey difficult for visitors coming north from Auckland. 

Despite it all, Kate says 2025 feels “genuinely back to normal.”

She organised a night’s stay for me in Lodge 9 luxury apartments. Built a few years ago, the gorgeous – and wheelchair-friendly – accommodation is an easy stroll or roll to bars, boats and other local attractions. 

The night I stayed, a wedding party celebrated. The next morning, the staff who put out our breakfast of chia, yoghurt, salmon, capers, coconut and coffee told me that despite the previous week’s weather bomb, bookings at Lodge 9 were healthy. 

Explaining why the luxury apartments were a little hard to find, lacking obvious signage, Kate told me: “We have it on a nice little down low – it’s something people are still discovering."

“We haven't been pushing it too hard, but it's a nice add-on that people can stay here as well as going out on the water with us.”

Perhaps it helps make one perfect day stretch overnight and on to the next.