Scuba Diving Training, Trips, News and Blog
Another Diver Certified! SK : Advanced Open Water
I’ve been taking stevenK through through his Advanced Open Water.
We have completed Peak Performance Buoyancy, Underwater Navigation and Night dives at Lake Pupuke but for his final two, we were off to the Poor Knights Islands. I took the day off from my number 1 job and we planned some Tuesday diving.
I’d been up there all weekend so I knew that the diving was good – and it didnt disappoint.
We had been booked to go out with Noel from Yukon Charters but I hadnt been able to rustle up any more passengers for the day so we were going out with Dive! Tutukaka which meant I was back on Calypso with Craig – who knew what I needed for the day and delivered the goods.
Our first stop of the day was Cleanerfish Bay which is quickly becoming one of my favourite spots.
We were to complete the Deep Adventure dive so we headed out to the corner of the bay (on the Middle Arch side) and dropped down to 26m for Steven to complete his skills.
We had massive stingrays flying over us. One, a mottled grey short tail ray, I have to estimate was wider than my Volvo!!
After the skills were complete, we headed back up and into the bay and spent the rest of the dive finding scorpion fish and watching crested blennies popping in and out of the rocks. There were a large number of smaller rays in the bay and they hung around even with the amount of divers in the water.
Our second dive was around Trevors Rocks.
Normally any spot at the Poor Knights is a good place to complete the Digital Photography dive – this site was even better with the afternoon sun on the busy side of the pinnacles.
I found my first diadema and we both took a lot of photographs.
For my student, he worked on the wider shots with a scorpion fish and after getting frustrated when the blennies wouldnt sit still for him, moved on to a clown nudibranch for his macro shots.
It wasnt a deep dive but it was a nice long dive to finish off his course. 75 minutes in the sunshine! And I could have stayed in the water for longer.
We surfaced to find Craig sitting on the back of the boat finishing his coffee and Sudoku and celebrated with a drive through the arches before heading back to Tutukaka.
Dive Data
Cleanerfish Bay : Depth 28.3m | Time 50mins | Visibility 15m | Temperature 20°C
Trevors Rocks : Depth 12m | Time 75mins | Visibility 15m | Temperature 20°C
