Dive report Okahu Bay: MS1

15 March 2023
2pm High tide

12:00 pm parked at Kelly Tarltons
Navigated nine fishers along wharf, mostly catching piper but one guy landed a small kingfish. Small mussels growing on steps (new).
12:30 pm Surface swim to breakwater (navigating fishing lines) then along a bit. 20-30 Tara roosting on breakwater. <10 Tara feeding in the bay near, floats (set net?) out from KT's

More wind than predicted, vis at surface not great, I could not see then end of my fins. Descended at breakwater to 5.5m. Nearly 1m vis. Some live oysters on seafloor. A few large dead kūtai shells, not too old, quite thin. Made my way across the mud and kept seeing small fish shoot into holes. I assume they are invasive Bridled Goby. I dont remember seeing them in this bay so tried to photograph them but it's very difficult. My big video light helped them stand out which may be why they seemed new.

Mussel bed located pretty fast. I took a few photos and checked the bed for anything interesting. It looked very similar to when I last dived it in December, there may well have been more dead shell but it did not look recent (casualties of this summers extreme weather events). If any clumps of mussel had been moved by storm surges they seem to have righted themselves. I tried my luck with laying a few random quadrants and using the GoPro to document them.

While documenting some of the colonial epifauna but began to get depressed by all the eleven-arm sea stars predating the kūtai. The mean size was about the size of my hand (not too big) but there were bigger and smaller ones. I estimated later that there was one every two square meters but I think if I had looked more carefully for smaller ones in a transect I would have found more. Decided to quit early.

Swam NE for 15 minutes, followed the breakwater for a bit and tried to photograph the fish using the crab holes. Dive computer says I was under for 41 minutes. Max depth 6m.

Surface swim back on the out-going tide. Navigated the fishing lines back to the wharf.

Posted on March 15, 2023 02:45 AM by shaun-lee