shaun-lee's Journal

18 May
Waves 0.5
High Tide 6am
Minor current
No wind (yet)
Vis 5-6m
85 minutes
Max depth 6m
Two wetsuits, hood, no gloves, a little cold at end, moving slow
Sunrise 7:14 am

I finally got around to doing a night dive. I decided before dawn was nice and safe incase anything went wrong. Underwater videographer Matt Silcock who has done some night diving came along and took the lead.

All my lights we mounted on my camera which made getting in the water and checking gauges a little tricky. I need an additional small torch. I noticed a little red on the horizon as we entered around 6:30am.

Larger snapper hung back well away from us as we headed out over the sand flats. Juvenile snapper were very approachable. Goatfish (who are not visual predators) were busy feeding and more approachable than during the day. I saw one bigeye in the open and some very fast moving trevally. Hiwihiwi also seemed more approachable. Unfortunately the two crayfish we saw were not in the open, they also had bigeye co-residents. A marble fish made a brief appearance but it was flighty. Large silver drummer also stayed well back like the usually do during the day.

It was easier to see each other than during the day and very cool watching the light slowly come up from underwater. I saw an interesting looking whelk dash for cover. When the sun had risen red moki appeared and the big snapper came closer. Two snapper got in a fight and their mouths locked together for a few seconds.

I watched a pied shag bring its partner sticks for the nest as I ate breakfast. Three sticks were bought in less than 15 minutes, one had foliage.

28 May
Waves 0.3
High Tide 1pm
No current
Wind from the north but this bay was sheltered
Vis 3-4m
90 minutes
Max depth 3m
Two wetsuits, hood, gloves, not cold, moving slow

Shallow dive with @Jordi_NZ to explore the reef west of Te Haruhi Bay in Shakespear Regional Park. We decided on the Western reef because it was closer and the Eastern reef had fishers on and off the rocks. We put all our gear on in the carpark and walked 150m to the waters edge (this was hard work but we could be gone a bit further without a break) entering the water around 12:15 (slack tide).

We swam over large patches of Neptunes necklace and Seagrass the later were sometimes raised up to 25cm above the seafloor. The raised edges of rock slowly grew in height as we swam SSE out of the bay. With the increase in size of these edges came more habitat complexity starting with denser and more diverse coralline algae, other species of brown kelp and one Caulerpa geminata.

I found the odd kina hiding under ledges. Mediterranean Fanworm, Eleven-armed and cushion sea stars were abundant. Several large Actiniid Sea Anemones were a treat to see. Closer to 3m I saw a few Aaptos sponges, for some reason a few of them were covered in gunk and I cleaned them off. We saw many nudibranch, the mostly lemon, some black and the odd gem. Jordi was pleased to find a very large White-speckled Seahare. Common triplefin were abundant and I saw the odd spotty. A large school of parore on the point added a lot of energy to the dive. I was also pleased to see a single green-lipped mussel on the way back.

Jordi retrieved just one breakaway sinker and I saw no fishing rubbish.