30 Minutes from Dive Now, Whangarei. One of our popular shallow training sites for Open Water courses. A shallow site, but busy with boat traffic.

30 minutes from Dive Now, Whangarei is this fantastic shore dive. Average depth of 5m with a max of 12m at the mouth of the bay. Fingers of encrusted reef run along the edge of the bay, with pockets of rocky reef scattered throughout the bay.

Limited car parking as this is by the start of a popular walking site that has toilets and a drinking fountain. Stairs down to the beach and then a long walk through shallow water with a slippery bottom until you find deeper water. Alternately divers travel here by boat and dive a little further from shore.

Shore dive down a maximum of 10m to explore the old mooring blocks and boulders on the sand, then come back up into the oyster covered boulders and then back across the seagrass to the exit point.

A potentially deep dive site of over 40m with strong currents makes this a site for experienced divers and freedivers with experienced boaties looking after them.

Access is by boat only here. A rocky kelpy shore line that slopes away to around 12m+ to the sand line. Some cool pinnacles and swim throughs can be found in the area. As you go further away from shore and follow the sand line to the 30m mark you will find some more spectacular pinnacles.

The HMNZS Waikato is 113.4m long, 12.5m beam and a draft of 5.5m she was the first of the Leander class frigates built for the NZ navy in 1966. Decommissioned in 1988 and sunk in late 2000. The HMNZS Waikato rests in two pieces leaning on it’s side in water 28m deep

Our heated indoor training pool is located on site and is around 24 degrees C warm. It is 1.4m deep in the shallows with a deep area that is 6m x 6m and 3.5m deep.

Ngaio Rock is a small rock that rises from sand at the western end of the Labrid Channel. The walls of the rock are steep and are covered in life. It is worthwhile circumnavigating the rock to properly explore the site!

Southern Arch is an impressively steep archway that towers over 40m above the surface. Its sides are steep and vertical, dropping to just 10m at the northern end and sloping to 40m or more at the southern end of the arch. This dive site can have strong current.