Northern Arch

The arch is a straight, slot-like cleft through the rock whose floor lies at roughly 36 to 40 m, with the bottom falling away beyond 50 m at its ends. Current running through the gap feeds sponges and encrusting life on the walls and attracts thousands of blue and pink maomao and two-spot demoiselles. Large snapper and kingfish pass through, and in late summer short-tailed stingrays gather in the arch in numbers. Out on the point bronze whaler sharks are sometimes met, and the deep walls off the point are a venue for technical divers. Seafriends warns that buoyancy control is critical here because the floor is deep and the walls are sheer.