Dive Trips

Gonna get wet anyway …

3 years ago

by dive mistress in New Zealand, Trip Reports, Underwater Photography

pete made the call and it was right, we were going to get wet anyways.

Last night in Auckland, we had rain, thunder and lightning. Yes the works! I was lying on the couch watching Jaws 1, 2 and 3 and thinking “yuck, tomorrow is going to be crap”. Then this morning, it pissed down. We arrived at the shop and I didnt even get out of the car for 10 minutes as the pouring rain was only going to drip down my back. But we were 7 and we were determined.

We grabbed the gear we needed and headed over the bridge and up the Northern Motorway on our way up to Jones Bay at Tarawhanui Regional Park. As we got further out of Auckland, the weather started to clear and the sun came out. We rocked through Matakana without too much long weekend traffic delay and then bumped and skidded our way down the gravel road to the bay.

keen as bro! Shane, Maria, Leigh, Pete, Alex and Craig just before the first dive

Alex and Craig had hotfooted it out of town and we all geared up, so not long after, we were all in the water. There were already a couple of dive flags out in the water – a really good indication of which way to head to find the scallops. Alex, Craig, Maria, Leigh and Shane all took off in one direction, meanwhile Pete and I bummed around looking at big gem nudibranchs and starfish. We hit a scallop bed in about 11.4m of water and Pete got out his knife to measure the scallops. Now he had taken a measurement off a tool at the shop before we left, so he said he knew which ones were the right size. Just remember that little titbit for later. None of the scallops we found were large enough so after 30 minutes, we turned around and headed back to the bay. Popping up just inside the bay, we could hear Alex singing which meant they had a good dive. We got back to the beach to find they had their quota and easily it seems.

Craig had sat on the bottom with the catch bag while Maria and Alex swam around throwing scallops at him to measure and then biff in the bag.

she wont use the changing rooms .... and wanders around in a towel when I have the camera out

would you drive with this man?

Alex and Craig were heading back to town to help Will out on the Rescue Diver course – the rest of us decided pretty quickly that we were definitely doing another dive.

Lying on the grass in ths sun, eating lollies and taking silly pictures, the weather pretty much held out for us.

Maria is having a damn fine day!

Muppet!!!

silly photos ... Mr Burns is back and Smithers would be excited!

and thats what Leigh thinks of that!

About an hour later, I was itching to get back in the water and man! I wanted my scallops. I wanted to find this great bed where the legal size ones were. We geared up, ran in and headed off in the same direction. Avoiding the beautiful long tail stingray (and trying to catch Leigh up who took off like an absolute rocket, I was towing the dive flag through a bit of swell).
At the same-ish depth, 11.7m, we found more scallops. This time I had taken my real measuring tool and lo and behold, Pete the muppet had taken the paua measurement at the shop so our previous finds would have been totally legal!! This time, Leigh sat on the bottom with the bag and counted in our quota.
Not 30 mins later, we were done and we headed back to the bay.

We stopped at the pub in Matakana for a little offgassing, a well earned beer and a bowl of fries. The perfect way to end a great days diving – when we hadnt really expected to be able to get in the water.

Back at the shop, we rinsed our gear and then poured our bounty into the bath to give it a quick clean and divide it all up. A 10% tip for Grant who had the job of working all weekend and Scuba Scallop Saturday can be called a complete success!!

the Scuba Saturday Scallop bounty!

Next trip, possibly crayfish or we might swap in a naturalist dive and do the crayfish on the following trip.

mmmm .. the butter and garlic is nearly ready ……..

Dive Mistress Jones Bay New Zealand Scuba Diving Trip Reports Underwater Photography

Trip Report : A bad days diving …

3 years ago

by dive mistress in New Zealand, Trip Reports

… is better than a good day working – any day of the year!

it has become apparent to me that i have a knack for picking the dive spot and the day for diving.
last few days, the weather has been a little poo. rain, wind – although the temperature hasnt really dropped. when saturday rolled around and it got chilly, i thought sunday was going to be a write off.

I woke up on Sunday morning bright and early .. and cracked a little smile.
It was shaping up to be a lovely day! threw open the doors and got to making breakfast. Pete was coming with me today to give me a hand and i thought the least i could do was feed him (especially as he had picked up the tanks as well). i went a little overboard. it was a full pan baked omelette and the two of us were stuffed when we had finished. i was thinking to myself that i really hoped i could still squeeze into my wetsuit.

on the drive up to goat island, the weather got better and better and better.
we arrived to an empty beach, high tide and reasonably clear water.

an early summer morning at Goat Island

the plan was – using a wreck reel with 1m and 5m points marked off – to map the training ground that we use for openwater divers.
this is most often west of shag rock/alphabet bay. as we bring students out on day one, i needed to find at least 12m and was hoping to find 18m. i wanted to record not only the topography but also changes in vegetation as there are nice sandy areas for skills and loads of kelp which you really want to steer clear of when you are with students – but the kelp is great for buoyancy practice when you are just out there for fun.

dont feed the fish mr burns!

we hopped around the rocks and checked out the fish (and i patted myself on the back for the good weather), then mr burns popped out to say hi. mr burns is a character that the juniors at petes work are supposed to take out and about and take photographs of in interesting places. he hasnt been many places yet so today was a great chance for him to have his picture taken. there are more pictures of him later in the day.

we geared up for the first dive and walked down to the beach.
the last 10 odd dives or so, i have been using a really nice DUI drysuit but today i was back in my mares trilastic wetsuit (with wool ski socks and fourth element beanie and kathmandu merino long sleeved top). i gingerly stepped my toe in and it wasnt that bad! in fact by the end of the day, i fell in love with my wetsuit all over again. anyhooo, i digress. i’d planned that we would swim out just past 200m where shag rock is and then drop down. i need to work out how far the kelp beds came out and where we could find the sandy areas. i need to take measurements and depth readings and i also wanted to make it a little interesting for pete. we laid out the reel and swam out about 50m in total. kelp, kelp, kelp, crayfish!! i had squidleighs camera on me, so out came the camera and out came mr burns. clipped the camera back on and took off again. kelp, snapper, kelp, snapper, camera, clip (big brass clip, my D-ring, sound of impending doom …….)

we changed course a little – headed off to the left (thats NorthWest) 50m or so and started again. by this time, the reel was starting to piss me off. we found a spot, i asked pete to stay for a moment so i could use the 5m mark to measure my kickcycles. i swam back and tried to communicate what i needed – we were going to swim out to the barren zone (i.e out of the kelp) using my kickcycles as measurement. i have now learnt that my signals and communication need a little work. or hes silly. lets go with that!
i swam out, counting, and didnt even think of looking back. muppet. i got 30m out and turned around looking for pete. who wasnt there. i swam back looking for him but in the 5m algae visibility, i couldnt even see his bubbles. finally i surfaced, waved to the glass boat man who showed me where his bubbles were, swam over, descended and shook the shit out of him. we ascended, kinda laughing, i punched him but no major harm done. there was a current on the way back so we descended again at which time i realised squidleighs camera wasnt where i had attached it. SHIT. SHIT SHIT.

what do you do? i talked to the glass bottom boat guy and seafriends. its positively buoyant so it will be bobbing around somewhere. if it gets sent there as lost and found .. well fingers crossed.

in the Emergency Action Plan, the glass bottom boat is identified as a hazard, but became useful

we had about an hour as a surface interval. for the next dive i wanted to head out to the rock again and then head off to the northwest a little further out to work out how far out the kelp line went. the second dive was so much better! we hit the coral zone which must be about 400m out. the tide was going out and had dropped a lot. where it should have been 16m, it was about 12m. we puttered back to shore – playing buoyancy turns and spins and stop – hover. it was quite a fun dive considering there wasnt a lot left to see and do.

we spent the afternoon mapping the area in the middle

i think i have all the data i need for my project. otherwise, goat island is an easy drive from auckland.
and we got to have icecream on the way home. yayyyy!!!

now for mr burns …..