Dive Report: South of North Reef

22 March 2024
7:30 am High tide
Vis 7m
Wave height 0.5m
Wind 5 knots
54 minutes
Max depth 16.4m

This was the second dive of the day with @jordi_nz and having already done a beautiful but uneventful dawn dive (however it was unusual to see a few individual kahawai shoot past us). We left the beach in a kayak and paddle board heading towards North Reef. I was surprised to observe the water close to shore looked clearer than it was during our earlier dive at high tide. Maybe the swell was dying down. It only took 10 minutes to get to the dive site, we were a little bit south of North Reef and did a NW dive line.

About seven large snapper circled us at the surface and we slowly dropped down 7-8 meters. The first thing I noticed was the Ecklonia Radiata which was in a terrible state. I looked for urchins to blame but could only see a few kina and the odd centros (note we did not see crayfish on either dive). The kelp was lush last time I dived the area in April 2022. UPDATE: @clinton pointed out that this study was done in the area and implicates grazing by the lysianassid amphipod Orchomenella aahu in dieback of the kelp.

There were so many fish! Huge schools of silver sweep and koheru wre everywhere. Blue maomao and the odd butterfly perch joined the schools. Large snapper and red moki roamed everywhere. Big eye and slender roughy could be found under ledges and trenches, along with the odd sleeping moki. We saw also leatherjacket and eagle rays. Demoiseles were defending their eggs, we saw several Sandager's wrasse get chased away. I also saw the demoiseles swimming close to the eggs and doing a little wiggle to oxygenate them. To top it of we were circled by a school of large kingfish which is always a real treat. I recommend this dive spot and will return to see what happens to the kelp.

Posted on March 22, 2024 07:22 PM by shaun-lee