SSI - Your Choice for Certification

Double Cove is a marine reserve located in the beautiful Queen Charlotte Sound. This site is ideal for beginners and training, as it is quite sheltered with depths from 9 down to 18m. Entry to the water is by boat or small jetty.

Jones Bay is fantastic for learning to dive. It has a sandy sloping bottom with plenty of shellfish. There is also a significant reef structure that provides shelter from the current.

Mathesons Bay is a sheltered bay that is perfect for diving! Divers can easily enter and exit the water via the beach or over the rock platform if the tide is right.

Great training site and suitable to dive year round. A sunken dingy at 11m is a good objective for the dive. Lake Rotoma was formed within the Rotoma caldera when lava flows from a large crater explosion blocked its outlet 9,500 years ago.

Humpback Whales are the greatest acrobats and singers among all the whales. They enjoy breeching, propelling their massive bodies out of the water and falling back in with a huge splash, slapping the water’s surface with their fins, and spyhopping. In addition to the sporty performances of these animals, their singing talent is second to none. One of the most magical moments that can be experienced by any scuba diver is to actually listen to the beautiful symphony of humpback whales while diving underwater. Their songs are very unique because they consist of complex, individual stanzas that repeat themselves. Humpback calves are even known to “whisper” to their mothers.

Charismatic, curious, cute, and smart are all reasons the bottlenose dolphin is the most well-known of the dolphins. The upward curvature of their mouths gives them the appearance of always smiling and their extreme intelligence makes them the easiest cetacean to train. Combine this with their friendly looks and it’s no wonder why they are the stars of most aquarium shows and many Hollywood movies. Not only do people have access to viewing them at most aquariums around the world, they are also the most common dolphin found in the wild, living in temperate, sub-tropical, and tropical waters all around the globe in almost every type of habitat.

Sea lions are pinnipeds that are easily recognizable by their external ear flaps, cute, pointy nose, long, puffed up chest, and their ability to walk on all fours. Some of the more popular sea lion species are the California sea lion and the Steller sea lion. These fast, agile swimmers can reach up to 30 knots underwater and are very curious about the world around them. In fact, sea lions are not afraid of scuba divers in the least and have been known to buzz right around a group of divers, blow bubbles at them, and even chewing on their snorkels and fins.

The mako shark has an incredibly special skin structure that allows it to swim up to 80 km/h, making them the fastest fish in the world. Due to its speed, they can cover enormous distances of up to 55 km per day and can actually jump up to 9 meters out of the water! These animals can be found throughout the world’s oceans in both tropical and temperate waters.