Diving the Hen and Chicken Islands: Northland's Boat-Only Archipelago
There is no jetty here. No dive shop, no cafe, no track down to the water. The Hen and Chicken Islands are reached by boat or not at all, which is most of the reason they still feel the way they do.
They sit 12 kilometres east of Bream Head and 40 kilometres southeast of Whangārei, off the east coast of New Zealand's North Island. Rocky islands, rocky reefs, open water on every side.
If you like diving where the boat ride is part of the day and the surface interval comes with seabirds overhead, this is your kind of place. The whole group has been a wildlife refuge since 1953, and a scenic reserve since 1908.
How the group is laid out
Captain James Cook named the islands after sighting them on 25 November 1769. It has been suggested the name came from an old name for the Pleiades, which makes a certain sense once you see one big island trailed by a scatter of small ones.
Taranga, or Hen Island, is the big one: 4.7 square kilometres, six kilometres long and on average less than a kilometre wide. It is the remnant of a four-million-year-old volcano, and a rocky ridge runs its length to 417 metres at a high point called The Pinnacles.
Three kilometres south of Taranga, Sail Rock rises straight out of the sea. Yachts use it as a navigation mark, and you will spot it long before you reach the islands.
The Chickens, or Marotiri, run northwest to southeast about seven kilometres from Taranga. Five small islands, each with its own character above water.
- Wareware and Muriwhenua (North West Chicken), two rocky islands totalling 3 hectares
- Mauitaha (West Chicken), 20 hectares of scrub-covered rock rising to 125 metres, a kilometre south of Muriwhenua
- Lady Alice Island (Big Chicken, Motu Muka), the largest Chicken at 1.4 square kilometres and ringed by rocky reefs
- Whatupuke (Middle Chicken), 1 square kilometre, steep, rising to 234 metres, with Starfish Bay on its southwestern peninsula
- Coppermine Island (Eastern Chicken), 75 hectares in two sections joined by a short isthmus
A ship went down out here
In June 1940 the Canadian-Australasian liner RMS Niagara struck a mine and sank off the islands. Her cargo included gold bullion, most of which was later salvaged. It is the kind of story that comes up on the ride out, and the Wikipedia entry on the islands covers it in a line or two.
Water temperature through the year
The islands fall inside marine weather area Brett, which runs from North Cape to Bream Head on the east coast. Keep an eye on it, because everything about a trip here depends on what the sea is doing.
| Month | Sea temperature (°C) | Wave height (m) |
|---|---|---|
| January | 21 | 1.1 |
| February | 22 | 0.9 |
| March | 21 | 1.3 |
| April | 20 | 1.6 |
| May | 19 | 1.6 |
| June | 18 | 1.1 |
| July | 16 | 1.0 |
| August | 15 | 1.0 |
| September | 16 | 0.8 |
| October | 16 | 0.8 |
| November | 19 | 1.1 |
| December | 20 | 1.2 |
February is the warm end of the year at around 22°C, with August the coldest at about 15°C. Wave heights sit lowest in September and October, around 0.8 metres, and run highest in April and May at about 1.6 metres. A late-summer trip gets you the warmest water; early spring gets you the flattest.
What the islands protect
The refuge status is about birds. Seabird colonies, plus forest birds that have become scarce or extinct on the mainland. BirdLife International lists the group as an Important Bird Area because roughly 500 pairs of Pycroft's petrels breed here.
By the late 1800s Hen Island held the only surviving population of North Island saddleback in the country. Translocations from Taranga to other island sanctuaries began in the 1960s, so a good number of New Zealand's saddleback today trace back to this one ridge.
There are native reptiles too: tuatara, geckos and skinks. On Mauitaha, the Department of Conservation and Ngāti Wai have set up a sanctuary for kiore, the Polynesian rat, whose movement through the Pacific paralleled Māori migration to New Zealand.
Planning a trip
Access to every site is by boat, usually from the mainland on a day trip, sometimes on a live-aboard. Operators are based elsewhere and come out to the islands, so your planning starts with picking a boat rather than picking a town. The Wikivoyage dive guide is the place to start reading.
The islands themselves are a refuge, so the day is spent on the water and under it. Whangārei is the nearest significant base, 40 kilometres to the northwest.
Coming back from a day out here? Log the dive in Scubaspot while the boat is still heading in, note the water temperature against the month you went, and add a photo of Sail Rock on the way home. If you dived the reefs around Lady Alice, rate the site so the next diver asking about the Chickens has something real to go on. Start at scubaspot.co.