Tamatea / Dusky Sound is a fiord on the southwest corner of New Zealand, in Fiordland National Park.

The sound has been identified as an Important Bird Area by BirdLife International because it is a breeding site for Fiordland penguins.

[citation needed] The inlet was first sighted by Europeans and Captain Cook noted its entrance during his first voyage to New Zealand in 1770.

On his second expedition he spent two months exploring the sound in March and April of 1773,[4] and used it as a harbour, establishing workshops and an observatory.

Cook saw the place as a good harbour for ships entering the Pacific from Europe by the shortest route, highlighting its maritime significance and overlooking its land-locked character.

Dusky Sound was consequently used as a harbour by other European navigators and merchant ships in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

[6] A group of 244 Europeans was stranded in Dusky Sound in 1795, which included two women, Elizabeth Bason and Ann Carey, the first known to have lived ashore.

[10] The Matilda under Captain Fowler was on this part of the coast in 1814 when six of his lascar (Indian) seamen absconded in an open boat.

[12] An attempt was made in 1903 to construct a road from Dusky Sound to Lake Manapouri, but it was never completed, terminating abruptly at Bishop Burn, on the western side of Loch Maree.

However, the Dusky Track stretches to the upper reaches of the sound, at Supper Cove, from lakes Manapouri and Hauroko.