Bay of Islands

Diving here is boat-based, and the day is shaped by which corner of Northland you are heading for. Charters leave in the morning from Paihia and Opua for the sites inside Cape Brett, usually two tanks with a long surface interval anchored somewhere out of the wind. The two wrecks lie far enough apart that operators generally run them as separate trips rather than pairing them, so a diver who wants both should plan two days and let the crew decide which one the forecast favours.

The bay is a drowned river valley, so the islands are the tops of old hills and the diving follows the same shapes underwater: rock faces dropping into sand, boulder gardens, and gutters funnelling between headlands. The outer cliffs at Cape Brett take the open ocean and hold the cave and swim-through work, and they are the first thing a swell takes away. Visibility runs anywhere from about 10 m to 30 m depending on whether the East Auckland Current is pushing warm water in that week.

The two wrecks also dive very differently. The Rainbow Warrior, off the Cavalli Islands near Matauri Bay, has been on the bottom long enough to read more as a reef than a ship, low and heavily overgrown, and it sits in open water that needs a settled day to reach. The Canterbury is still unmistakably a ship and big enough that most divers give it two dives: one around the outside for the shape of the hull, one working the opened-up interior with a torch.

This suits divers who are comfortable in cool water, roughly 14°C at the end of winter and low twenties late in summer, and who want structure rather than colour. A thick wetsuit or a drysuit is standard and a hood earns its place outside the summer months. December through April rate highest and May is close behind; June to August are still dived, but with greener water, more wind and a better chance of the boat standing down. Anyone hoping for tropical reef will be disappointed, and anyone who likes wrecks and rock will not.