This past Saturday (May 26th) was spent up in Tutukaka for some Poor Knights Islands diving! I rode up Friday night with 4 other AUUC divers, one of which used to live in PSV before he got kicked out (or chose to move? it's a multi-sided story, but I think there was a massive tiff between him and one of his roomies after he had to get air-lifted off a mountain because him and his buddies weren't prepped with the local info). We had a pretty good group though, and most of us kept up the conversation for the duration of the ~3 hr drive. I ate mick dicks for the first time in ages!
The next day started bright and early (though not as early as the group that had to drive from Auckland that morning!) and we were on the boat out to dive by 9am. Our captain and guide was this awesome Kiwi guy who liked to tell us to beware the Giant Wetas that would jump down onto our heads at anytime, and warn us of possible shark chompings. He also described some of the sea life that we could expect (or hope for) among which was the NAUDIBRANCH! (I fell in love with this creature - yes, it's a sea slug - a couple years ago because of this web post). I saw my first one on our first dive off the boat (my second ever boat dive! - the first being Matauri Bay - I haven`t gotten that far in my recap yet) it - they`re hermaphrodites, but require a buddy to reproduce - was an awesome white orange and purple one!
The first dive site was Trevor`s Rock (apparently a guy named Trevor ran into a rock that`s only ever visible at low tide - go figure). In addition to multiple naudibranch(e)s we saw some carpet sharks - which I may or may not have pet - and some really cool black sea urchins that shimmered green. Our next site was Middle Arch were we saw some sting rays, and came up inside an air-bubble in a cave! You could take your regs out even though we were still 5m below sea level! (though I wouldn`t recommend it, the air was majorly stale...). We also swam through Middle Arch where there was quite a bit of a current, and found massive (fist-sized) matting naudibranchs! (all the others were ~half a pinky-sized). After we surfaced and climbed onto the boat, a seal appeared! A few of us quickly put away our gear and hopped back in with just wetsuits to swim and play with the seal. I think it was having as much fun as we were! Jono got some pretty good shots of it with his GoPro!! Our third and final dive site was Cream Gardens where we swam along a massive wall with lots of eels and tons of fish. I cut my hand on a piece of coral, but it didn't get infected!
Peace!
Laura
