Dive reports NW Waiheke Island
21 Feb 2023
6:30 Left Half Moon Bay, calm 7 knots clear skies
7:00 Sunrise
8:05 First dive West of Owhanake Bay, c100m N of a small island that is connected to the mainland at low tide -36.77102222222222 174.98397777777777
35 minutes. Start air only 190 bar. Vis 8m at surface. I was planning on swimming SSE towards the island. I dropped 15m to the seafloor and pleased to find complex shell hash. Vis more like 5m on the seafloor. Quite dark due to the low angle of the sun. I changed my mind and decided to circle the area. There were several eleven-armed sea stars, I headed north to see how far the shell hash stretched. Within a minute or two I found piles of large dog cockle shells, I searched the bed which was beautiful and full of life, video here I could not find the N, W or E edge of the bed. It was hard to find live ones but the starfish did not seem to be having the same problem.
A large school of undersize tāmure / snapper cruised past me but kept their distance, I saw one more small snapper and a few triplefins but not heaps of fish. Between the island and where I dropped down there were big clumps of tube worms, I was not able to see how big the bed was as I was at 50 bar and needed to do a safety stop.
9:00 High tide
9:30 Second dive. -36.772033 174.985946
70 minutes. 5m. Vis 3-4m.
Some of the kelp had a fair bit of sediment on it but the areas with bare rock looked the worst. I think much of it may have been from the January flooding and February cyclone. I felt bad for the small filter feeders like the stony corals which looked choked. Vertical areas looked fine and the kelp forest was still alive and intact.
I saw one small kingfish when i got in. After that a few goatfish, lots of spotty and common triplefins, a huge school of sweep, two schools of jack mackerel, one parore and one small snapper. The huge school of sweep swam around me at the same time as the jack mackerel and I felt like I was in a marine reserve for a few minutes.
I heard the odd boat while I was underwater but on the surface passing boat noise was drowned out by the landowners mowers. There is a lot of grass to mow there and they were busy for the two hours I was in the little bay.
Around 10:30am the breeze disappeared and the water went glassy. I paused to take a photo on the way out and two Rako mistook me for a fisher. They hung around while I took photos video here.
