Dive Now is a Whangārei-based dive centre and training facility at 41 Clyde Street, operating both a retail and instruction business in the city and charter trips out to the Poor Knights Islands Marine Reserve off the Tutukaka coast.
### Training and facilities
The centre is an SSI Instructor Training Centre, a Free Diving Training Centre and an XR (extended range) Training Centre, running courses from complete-beginner level through to instructor qualification. It covers scuba, freediving and snorkelling instruction. The Clyde Street premises include full on-site facilities and a training pool, so confined-water sessions and try-dive style introductions can be run in-house without needing to travel to the coast.
Dive Now also operates as a dive retailer, stocking scuba, snorkelling, spearfishing and freediving equipment from brands including Scubapro, Shearwater, Apeks, Halcyon, OMS, Mares, Cressi, Beuchat, Santi and Rob Allen. Equipment hire supports both course students and charter guests.
### Poor Knights Islands charters
Charter bookings for diving and snorkelling trips to the Poor Knights Islands are available year-round on the company's own vessel, and open-water certification dives are conducted at the marine reserve. The Poor Knights is a fully protected marine reserve with a large number of established dive sites, subtropical current-influenced marine life, arches and sea caves, and is one of New Zealand's best-known dive destinations. Published trip formats include a single-day Poor Knights day trip, a three-dive day for more experienced divers, and a night-dive option.
### Suitability for MICE groups
For incentive and conference programmes, Dive Now offers two clearly different levels of engagement. Certified divers can be taken straight onto a Poor Knights charter as a premium incentive activity, while non-divers in the same group can be accommodated as snorkellers on the same trip or given a pool-based introductory session at the Clyde Street facility — useful when a delegate group has mixed water confidence and you need everyone included.
Because the charter runs on a fixed vessel schedule and is weather-dependent, marine activity of this kind should be booked well ahead and paired with a wet-weather alternative in the programme. Vessel capacity, group rates and minimum certification requirements are not published and should be confirmed directly with the operator. Related Northland activities can be used to build a contingency option.
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