Poor Knights Island

Being avid divers we couldn’t pass up a chance to dive one of Jacque Cousteau’s top 10 dive sites; whether it be one of his top 10 overall or top 10 sub-tropical we don’t know. At 60F we donned almost 14mm of wetsuits to keep us warm for our underwater exploration. Not knowing what to expect for sub-tropical diving we were pleasantly surprised as we entered the water.

We were greeted by hundreds of Trevally Jacks schooling up tiny shrimp for dinner. Once we settled down with our 25 lbs of weight, we explored the encrusted wall and to our delight we were saw numerous nudibranchs (aka sea slugs). Being enthralled by a single nudibranch on a dive we couldn’t believe it when we saw families of them, some as small as a finger nail to almost 4 inches in length. We encountered five different species on our two dives!


During our lunch interval our skipper guided our boat into the largest sea cave in the world. Rikoriko cave received its name from Maori word for dancing light because the reflected light seems to dance across the ceiling of the cave.


The skipper shared a few stories about how the islands became to known as the Poor Knights. One story involved the similarities of the islands to a dessert sailors used to eat while they were at sea with the different colors on the shore line resembling the poor knights desert. The other story comes from the view of the horizon looking like a knight buried above the ground with the head at one end and the feet and shield at the other. Back in those days rich knights were buried underground, while poor ones above. Since, Cook didn’t have any notes on his charts about his reason for naming these islands, nobody knows the real reason behind the name of the Poor Knights Islands.