Bay of Islands Trip Report by Ali Perkins

Hi Mum,

Having a great time in New Zealand! I’ve just spent an amazing weekend diving in the Bay of Islands with the Auckland University Underwater Club. Splashing in at Putahataha Island, we entered another universe, one inhabited by slimy alien craft called salps. These translucent creatures drifted about in a most ghostly way, sometimes joining together in long chains.

Diving in this oceanic salp soup was a really cool experience. Have you seen photos of the “jellyfish lake” in Palau? This must surely be the New Zealand equivalent. So thick was the water with these gelatinous orbs, it was difficult to find space between them through which to fin. They soon draped from my strobe arms and their touch was like velvet on my exposed lips, but not in a nice way. I couldn’t seem to capture quite what it was like with a photo, so I uploaded this small video to YouTube. It doesn’t have fancy music and captions like Mazdak’s videos but it shows what it was like, and you can see a not-so-friendly Painted moki.

The Leatherjackets and Demoiselles were waging a war on the intruders, chomping them up at a rapid pace. One particular Leatherjacket was jealously guarding all of the salps and aggressively charged any fish that dared to feed on them. Given a salp to fish ratio of about sixteen thousand to one, this seemed like a lot of wasted effort for the poor Leatherjacket.

In the side of the island was a dark yawning cavern. Guarding the entrance was a Mottled moray; a thick curtain of Bluebell tunicates framed the opening. Anemones and colourful nudibranchs provided a splash of colour all around.

On the second dive another group of divers were visited by a seal. Led by “sex bomb” dive guide Daryl they saw crayfish, moray eels and other cool stuff. I was preoccupied with a fancy lettuce-like sea slug called a Blue spotted elysia (Elysia sp). You know how I like to look at the moving colour on the walls!

Against our hopes, the weather hadn’t improved any on Sunday. That’s the way it goes on dive trips. Sometimes you get the weather that money can’t buy. Other days you wish you could buy the weather, because at least then you could ask for your money back. A misty grey sky clung to the water as we bashed out through the swell to the Canturbury. We had an amazing dive on the wreck, drifting around with the salps and fish. Back on the boat, Julia told us we were heading for home. The ocean was whipping into a furious swell so although we were disappointed to miss out on the final dive of the weekend, Julia clearly had our safety in mind. We were glad to be in her capable hands as she surfed us back to shore.

It’s too bad there weren’t more people on the trip to share in the fun. It was a small group with Kevin, David, Libby and Niamh. But the “event that shalt not be named lest you get sued” is on right now so a lot of people have turned into couch potatoes. Sucks to be them! They missed out on an amazing weekend of diving.

Love to Dad,
Ali

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