Half a trip report – Bay of Islands 3rd May 2009 by Gabrielle Beans

I’ve managed to be an occasional member of the AUUC for the past 3 years and yet had never ever ever ever been diving up at the Cowshed with Northland Dive. I did at one point get a great ride over to Cape Brett with them and dived from there, but that has been the extent of my involvement with them. Let me just say this has been a huge mistake – if you haven’t gone diving with them get off your asses this instant and head over there on the next dive trip. It’s simply brilliant.

Kathryn, Mike, Janine and I headed up on Saturday afternoon (after ably changing a tire) in a cold downpour, wondering if Sunday would clear up or if maybe sitting indoors with a hot chocolate re-watching the Lord of the Rings for the 100th time was a better idea. Or maybe that was just me. It’s a good thing we didn’t because Sunday started off like a perfect summer’s day, all blue and crisp. We joined up with the other divers that had the misfortune of freezing the day before and set off eagerly in the bright sunshine towards our first dive sites. Most people went off to a pinnacle whose name I have forgotten, but a few of us went to the Canterbury wreck. I’m not much of a wreck diver; as a biologist I’d rather be chasing some unfortunate animal or staring at sponges intently than looking at rusting metal. The only other wrecks I’ve been on are the Rainbow Warrior, which is just covered in life and isn’t all that big, and a couple of old wrecks in Calabardina, Murcia, Spain, covered in conger eels. As the Canterbury is a recent wreck I didn’t have high expectations for the marine life on it, which is why I’d never made an effort to dive it before. That was incredibly stupid of me. Seeing the first bits of life take over and make their home there was almost more impressive than looking at a completely colonised wreck. Baby snapper, jewel anemones just starting to cover the railings… combined with the sheer size of the wreck (massive compared to what I’d been on before!).

Darryl was kind enough to guide us through 2 floors of the ship, through the hangar into the sonar room, up through the gun turret… I can’t recall exactly where we went but it was frankly awesome going through the rooms that had once housed people for months at a time at sea. I wanted to take some pictures but at 31 metres was feeling a bit narced and pushing more than one button to change settings proved to be much too complex a task for me. By the time it was time to go back up all I wanted was 5 more minutes to explore… and 5 more, and 5 more. Brilliant. Our surface interval lying in the sun after a good feed was just enough to get my body temperature back up before getting back in the water at our second dive site, Bigeyes Lair, which was full of everything I love about diving – a beautiful, dark swim through full to the brim of fish (the Bigeyes of Bigeyes Lair), morays curling around rocks and refusing to hold still for portraits, a little skittish eagle ray I followed till it hit some bubbles and made like a banana and split. I got to see some banded coral shrimp, which I hadn’t seen before, staring me down and daring me to try to get past them into their crevasses, as though I couldn’t just reach out and eat them then and there. I missed out on Sonic Boom Cave, but there was just too much to see for one dive – and only cold bones and impending deco time could make me surface. All in all it was just a perfect day, and I can’t wait to go back and do it all over again.

View more images from this trip in the Gallery.

View more images from the Bay of Islands and find out more information. The next club trip to the Bay of Islands is on 3-6 July.

Filed under: Ali Perkins, Diving New Zealand, Trip Reports