DAY 1 - Saturday
Tutukaka marina at first lightThe Poor Knights Marine Reserve was the venue for this weekend's diving. I arrived at the Tutukaka marina at 5:30am and grabbed a quick sleep amongst all the dive gear in the back of my station wagon. "Uncomfortable" would have been quite an understatement.
The weather forecast for the weekend was not looking good, but in reality only a slight wind was blowing and the ground swell was relatively manageable on the Saturday. Noel Ericsson, our skipper, guided the Yukon Charters boat 'Arrow' over the bumpy twelve nautical miles of ocean to the Poor Knights southern lying Aorangi Island. My dive buddy for the day was Gareth Bellamy, who was diving his home-built manual closed circuit rebreather.
Our first dive was at a site simply known as "The Rock" off Archway Island. This huge pinnacle-like lump of rhyolite dropped from 6m to 48m on its southern flank, and was covered in sponges and soft corals. Every nook and cranny was filled with nearly every species of triplefin and blenny. Small grey moray eels were spread about everywhere on the walls, some crammed into very tight holes. I even found one jammed into a hole lying upside down and looking ready to pounce on some small unsuspecting reef dweller. I thought it best not to wiggle my gloveless finger in front of it because I’ve seen the lightning fast strikes these guys can make.
The fish life near and on the walls consisted of very territorial black angelfish, shoals of adult and juvenile two-spot demoiselle, blue maomao, pink maomao, red pigfish, kingfish, and a solitary juvenile long tailed stingray. A clown toado (also known as a sharp-nosed puffer) swam about conducting its daily business of nibbling at sponges, bryozoans, and ascidians.
Gareth and myself swam in a counter-clockwise direction around "The Rock", slowly ascending from the depths to the sun-lit summit where our dive boat was stationed. After completing the last of our required decompression, we surfaced and joined the rest of crew onboard 'Arrow' after 75 minutes in the 21C water.
Eastern Archway (The Tunnel)Noel took ‘Arrow’ around to Rikoriko Cave where a samba band had planned to hold a concert on a boat (the sea cave is huge and has superb acoustics, some big bands have played concerts and recorded in there!), but the swell was a bit ugly looking. We ended up catching up with the band in Eastern Arch (also known as The Tunnel) in Arorangaia Island. The acoustics were really good and the band played some great Afro-Brazilian rhythms (when the big drums played and reverberated through the archway, they were out of this world). This was all part of the 25th anniversary of the creation of the Poor Knights Marine Reserve and the Oceanz Awards dinner being held in Tutukaka later that evening.
Our surface interval seemed to pass quickly, and in no time at all we were geared up and were ready to drop down on the second dive site called “Fraggle Rock” which was only a short distance from previous dive site.
The water was crystal clear giving the impression that when jumping off the boat you were going to hit the rocky slopes below, but upon entering we found that there was at least 8m between the rock and the surface. At first glace, the top of the slope looked almost barren but on closer inspection it was buzzing with activity from all the crested blennies and triplefins living in a garden of small bryozoans. We headed down to the white sandy beach that lay in 42m at the foot of the slope. Grey moray eels occupied ledges on the wall and the red spiny lobsters noisily announced their presence from the back of larger holes with cracking sounds.
Heading along the submerged beach with the wall on our right, we soon discovered a swim-through in the lava rock and stole the opportunity to explore it further. Gareth led the way and we quickly found ourselves at the end of a short lava tube section. This lay at the bottom of a crack in the slope that ran all the way from the surface. This was an awesome place to be and I let out expressions of appreciation (the diving of rebreathers allows divers to talk to each other) which Gareth quickly acknowledged.
The wall ended abruptly with a sudden right-angled turn to the right, which we followed for about 20m as it took us into shallower waters. At this point we turned the dive and ascended slowly whilst traversing the wall back to the boat. Shoaling kingfish joined us while we decompressed. Some were even swimming within inches of me which is very rare for these majestic game fish (again, yet another benefit of diving a rebreather… no bubbles to scare away creatures).
Decompression completed and back onboard ‘Arrow’, Noel headed back to Tutukaka. The crossing passed very quickly for me because I fell asleep, no doubt complete with loads of dribble pouring from my mouth and loud snorting sounds emanating from my airways.
