Komal, diving in New Zealand

ई लडकी, कोमल, थो बहुत हिम्मथिया निच्क्ला !!

Komal reporting from Under Water.

Hi people,

Thought I'd fill you in on my exciting (With a captial E) weekend..

This weekend I took a trip up to the Poor Knights Islands, off the east coast of Whangarei. Rated by the experts as one of the top 10 dives sites in the world. It is one of the many marine reserves in NZ. This was my first dive trip after finishing my course a month ago. I was a bit aprehensive, since I didn't really know anyone else that was going (except 1 instructor) but I guess that was part of the adventure. It was kind of a 'spur of the moment' decision.

The trip incorporated 5 dives, 3 on Saturday and 2 on Sunday. Saturday started off with chopy seas and 1.5 to 2.5m "swells" (cliffs).. when you're on a 7m boat and you fall off a 2.5m "wave" with no back... it's not fun... you know the feeling when you're at the top of a roller coaster and you perch on the edge for a little while before you go crashing down... only this time its airbourne for about 2 seconds before the boat hits a water with a bone jarring crash.... needless to say say there were some very sick divers on board, including me... but hey at least it brought the fish closer! They must have liked our breakfast.

The water was a reasonable temperature at 18 degrees, with a full wetsuit on it was quite comfortable. Our first dive got us down to 18m. Unfortunately there weren't too many fish around.. just some lonely snapper swimming around. it funny they just come straight up to your face and stare at you... quite ugly really... and then you can just slap them in the face and they'll bugger off. We decided to attract a little bit more attention by cutting open some kinas and having a bit of a feeding frenzy... we even had a little moray eel join in the fun... Eels are actually quite cute, they're shy little things and get a bit anxious when you look at them for too long. Never thought I'd see them in that light...

The 2nd dive was better got to about 20m.. saw some cool scorpion fish.. they basically look like a big rock.. and then they move and its like.. oops sorry fishy.. didn't see you there. we explored a cave where someone had decorated it witha nice frog garden statue.. apparently there are few garden statues down there which divers have left in caves. The best thing was when we were coming up the whole area full of white floaty stuff.. (I thought it was guys throwing up again) but then you looked really closely and they were moving! it was basically thousands or tiny organisms... like microscopic jelly fish blobbing around, little square transparent creatures... so pretty you could see their delicate skelatal structures ... very cool. when we finally did surface the guys on the boat were feeding these huge snapper and king fish. They would basically eat out of our hands... man some of those snapper are pretty aggressive... I had three of them charging up to me at one time... hehe bet you guys wish you could have stuck a fishing line down there... I caught some with my bare hands.. :)



The 3rd dive was the best! we went into this archway called the Blue Mao Mao archway.. and guess what... it was full of blue Mao Mao.. thousands of them... they all hang out there.. it's their nightclub. most of them stand by the wall looking bored... and you know the funny thing... they all line up and face one direction... there was this solid wall of fish....you know the schooling fish in Finding Nemo... exacly like that... like you'd go up and scatter them around.. and then two seconds later... they're back in perfect order again... I wish i could have asked them to make shapes for me :).. the thing is.. we went back there the next morning and they'd all packed their bags and gone somewhere else!

We found them in a another tunnel though... it's like "what a you guys doing here? Go back home!"... The tunnel on our 5th dive was awesome!! We saw some huge crayfish and ofcourse the Mao Mao who we fed when we surfaced. But the coolest thing was there was a crazy surge in the tunnel... like it would just push you forward... the fish would move first so we did get some warning.. and then it would surge the other way so you had the hold on to the rocks to avoid getting sucked into the vortex... it was so much fun... and then it would push you forward again... you didn't have to swim at all... again for those who've seen Finding Nemo it was like that current where the turtles were swimming... cowabunga dudes!... awesome!...

Anyway... that's enough fishy stories for one day... My cheapie Kodak underwater camera didn't do a good job but there are some photos attached so you guys can kinda see what it looks like...