Why Ocean Leopard No Longer Offers Snorkeling
Until last year, snorkeling was part of the Ocean Leopard tour. Guests could jump in around the marine reserve, spend a few minutes in the water, and climb back aboard before we continued along the coast. We took it away, and it wasn’t a marketing decision. It came out of a genuine safety review, and it’s one we’d make again.
What changed
We worked closely with Maritime NZ and WorkSafe NZ to review every part of our operation, snorkeling included. Looking at it properly, a few things became clear.
The snorkeling we offered was classified as an “advanced snorkel.” Guests were in open water, over their heads, with no seabed to stand on and no ability to touch bottom if something went wrong. That meant guests needed to be confident swimmers to participate safely, and we had no reliable way to guarantee that from a quick conversation on the wharf.
That gap between what guests told us and what we saw in the water became one of the clearest signals for us. More than once, we saw guests who’d genuinely believed they were capable swimmers struggle once they were actually out there. Part of that came from the water itself — even on a warm day, the cold can genuinely take people’s breath away the moment they go in, catching them off guard and making the first minute in the water far harder than they expected.
Open water, a bit of swell, no seabed underfoot and a cold-water shock most people hadn’t braced for is a very different experience to a swimming pool, and it isn’t always obvious to someone how different it will feel until they’re already in it. Seeing that happen firsthand made the risk very real to us, well beyond a theoretical concern on paper.
Getting back on board was its own challenge, and one people tend to underestimate just as much as the swimming itself. We were always anchored for snorkeling, never underway, but even climbing from open water onto a stationary boat takes more strength and coordination than most guests expect, and we regularly saw people who needed to be pushed from below and pulled from above just to get back aboard. Beyond the physical difficulty, it wasn’t a dignified moment for the guest involved, and that’s something we took seriously too — a good day on the water shouldn’t include a guest’s most awkward moment of the trip happening in front of everyone else on board.
It also meant we couldn’t put guests in the same lifejackets they wore for the rest of the trip. Our lifejackets are gas-inflatable, designed to be worn dry and only inflate when needed — they aren’t suitable for someone actively swimming and snorkeling in the water, so guests would have been in the water without one at all.
On top of the swimming and lifejacket issue, there was a simpler, more practical problem: keeping snorkel gear genuinely sanitary when it’s shared across multiple guests, multiple times a day, every day, is a hard standard to meet consistently. We didn’t think we could guarantee it to the level we’d want for our own family, let alone our guests.
Put together, those three things told us the same thing. So we removed it.
What we do instead
The tour still gets you close to the water, caves and marine reserve — you just won’t be asked to get in.
Removing the snorkeling stop has also changed how we use those two hours. Rather than anchoring while guests change, get fitted with equipment, enter the water and climb back aboard, we can keep exploring. That means more time travelling the coastline, entering caves when conditions allow, stopping for photographs, looking for wildlife and hearing the stories behind the landscape.
What We Didn't Expect
When we removed snorkeling, we assumed there would be some visitors for whom that would make Ocean Leopard less appealing. And for people who specifically want to snorkel in the marine reserve, that’s completely understandable.
What we didn’t expect was to hear that, for some visitors, the opposite was true. Our local i-SITE presents visitors with the different boat-tour options available in the area and explains the differences between them, including that snorkeling isn’t part of the Ocean Leopard tour. They’ve told us that a number of visitors specifically choose Ocean Leopard because we don’t include a snorkeling stop. For some people, getting into the water simply isn’t what they want from a scenic boat tour. They’d rather spend those two hours exploring the coastline than spend part of the trip anchored while other passengers get ready, enter the water and climb back aboard.
We didn’t remove snorkeling to create more sightseeing time. But that’s turned out to be an unexpected benefit.
A Note on Older Reviews
If you come across an older review that mentions snorkeling with Ocean Leopard, that’s accurate for the time it was written — it just no longer reflects the tour we run today. We’ve updated what we can across our own website and listings, but reviews are guests’ own words and we don’t edit or remove them. We’d rather be upfront about the change here than leave visitors wondering why an old review doesn’t match what they read on the day.
A Fair Note on Other Operators
Several other tours in the area do offer snorkeling, and that’s a genuine part of what some visitors are looking for. We’re not suggesting those operators are getting it wrong — we can only speak to our own boat, our own guests and our own risk assessment. This was the right call for our operation. It may not be the right call for every operator, and that’s a reasonable difference for visitors to weigh up when choosing a tour.
If snorkeling in the marine reserve is important to your trip, it’s worth checking directly with an operator whether it’s included, and asking the same questions we asked ourselves — how the activity is supervised, what’s provided, and how swimming ability is assessed before anyone gets in the water.