Diving Thoughts

Nothing to do with diving, although I suppose fish are involved, but I’m a big kingfisher fan as I think they are very pretty birds. Apparently they have to consume their own body weight in food each day. And let’s just say that after Christmas, it’s a very good thing that I don’t!

Anyway Paul Richards,  an amateur photographer, photographed a kingfisher catching six different types of fish in a tw0 hour period.

I have to say that even though the photos are excellent, I would be struggling to identify the fish – maybe that’s why I prefer wreck diving. Anyway they are well worth a look and are on The Daily Telegraph’s website.

Sun 23 Nov: After several great days in Fiordland it was time to leave. We set off from Manapouri relatively early and stopped in Te Anau for petrol. We found the best pie shop we’d been to so far on the trip and sampled venison and mint lamb pies, as well as a cornish pasty.

Suitably sated and we found ourselves retracing our steps towards Kingston. Inevitably we ran into the Kingston Flyer again, this time as it was setting off from Kingston, and Rita got some video of it.

We pushed on towards Wanaka, past Arrowtown, which is a historic mining town. After a wrong turn which meant we drove almost all the way into Arrowtown, then out again without actually seeing it, we took a slight detour over a lovely, hilly road, full of hairpin bends and spectacular views. It was a really nice drive. In fact the only problem was that the hills meant radio reception was awful. But since we were so busy looking at the views, that was no real hardship.

Wanaka itself was a pleasant town alongside a nice lake. We took another slight detour here to go to Rippon winery. Since I was driving, the onerous task of trying out the local wines fell to Rita – it’s a tough job but someone had to do it.  Since we knew we were going to be driving through the region, we’d made a point of looking for a Rippon wine at the Te Anau supermarket that morning, and we’d spotted a white wine, an Osteiner, a grape I’d not heard of. Now Rita was lucky enough to try it, along with a sauvignon blanc, a Riesling and 2 Pinot Noirs. We ended up buying the Osteiner, so at least I got to try it later on, and I have to say it was very good.

From there we headed on past Lake Hawea and up to Makarora where there was a holiday park. Actually this holiday park was the centre of some adventure tour operators, who combine flights in a small plane, with camping, hiking, white water rafting and cycling. They’ve got a variety of different alternatives and durations, and half the guys working there seemed to be British. We had a couple of beers sitting outside the bar listening to an English guy and a Scot talking about fishing. They’d both obviously spent a fair amount of time living in New Zealand, and it was interesting to find out something about a sport about which I know very little.

The weather was detiorating and it looked as though our good fortune was about to run out. We were to find out how much it had run out when we set off the following morning.

It’s just over 4 years since the tsunami that devastated many of the coastal communities in the Indian Ocean. In a small piece of  good news, scientists have found that some of the reefs that were damaged are recovering rapidly. It had originally been feared that some of the reefs off Indonesia could take 10 years to recover, but the New York  based Wildlife Conservation Society is reporting rapid growth in young coral in areas that had been badly hit. Apparently some communities are even abandoning  destructive fishing practices, which could be particularly good news for the future.

More from the BBC here.

At around 6pm on Tuesday night (23 Dec) a NZ man, Ian Foden, who had been diving for mussels, surfaced to find that his boat had come loose from its anchor. His wife was in the boat, but was an inexperiened sailor. They shouted at each other, but she wasn’t able to pick him up before the currents separated them and she lost sight of him in the swells. She searched for a while but when she was unable to find him she alerted the coastguard to look for him and to help her get the boat back to shore.

Meanwhile Mr. Foden dropped his weight belt but kept the rest of his dive gear and swam around 5km to shore in swells and current. The Maketu coastguard said he was extremely luck because conditions were deteriorating.

You can read more from the New Zealand Herald.

Once again it’s worth remembering the importance of having good boat cover and some way of making yourself more visible at the surface.

Kayakers off Sydney found themselves being circled by a 4-5 metre great white (white pointer) off about a kilometre off Long Reef, according to the Sydney Morning Herald, which also has a video of the incident.

The BBC also has some video of the shark.

So it seems to have been a busy time for sharks in Australia, although that’s probably largely because it’s a summer weekend over the Christmas holidays,  so more people are in the water.

A 51 year old, Brian Guest, who was snorkelling with his 24 year old son in waters near Port Kennedy south of Perth, is believed to have been taken by a shark.The incident happened at around 7am on 27 December while he was snorkelling for crabs in relatively shallow water.

Witnesses did report seeing a shark in the area. A search by six boats and a helicopter have failed to find Mr. Guest, although there are reports that part of a wetsuit has been found.

According to a news.com.au article, Brian Guest had told Western Angler website forums in 2004 and 2005 that he did not believe in killing sharks. Police have apparently said there would be no hunt for the shark involved.

You can read more from WAToday, the Daily Mail and the BBC.

Since I’ve been stuck with a cold for nearly a month now, I’ve not managed any diving. Hence the renewed enthusiasm for hiking. This week instead of continuing the Wilson Trail, we joined up with Trevor and his brother and sister-in-law, Greg and Lyn. We were going from Mt. Butler, near Trevor’s place, around Mt. Parker, across to Ma Tong Au and then down into Tai Long Wan (Big Wave Bay).  It’s about 20km and is a lovely walk, with the added advantage of being mainly flat.

It was a bright, sunny day, with a cloudless blue sky. Or as blue as Hong Kong’s sky ever gets. This path is lined with trees, which keeps it relatively cool, even on hot days. The first part is a pleasant walk around the northern side of Mount Butler itself, with views over Quarry Bay and North Point. It then heads in towards the Tai Fung Au (Quarry Gap), that divides Mt. Butler and Mt. Parker.

We hit the road below Tai Fung Au, and crossed it before starting around Mt. Parker itself. This particular path is one of my favourites in Hong Kong. Mt Parker is quite steep and this path follows the contour. Actually it slopes very slightly upwards, is tree-lined, narrow, and wends its way past occasional rocks and boulders. Breaks in the trees give you some good views over the city, first Taikoo, then as you get further round you see Sai Wan Ho, with the Coastal Defence museum in the background. The path carries onto the easter slopes of Mt. Parker and eventually becomes a catchwater. Finally we got to a set of steps that lead steeply down to Tai Tam  road.

The worst part of the walk is a 400 yard stretch along Tai Tam Road, which is very narrow and has no pavement. From there we took another catchwater towards Ma Tong Au, this one just above one of the big cemeteries along that stretch of hillside. From Ma Tong Au, the path follows the last 1.5km of the Hong Kong Trail down into Tai Long Wan, from where a short taxi ride got us to several bottles of TsingTao and a good meal at the Shek O Thai restaurant.

(No photos this week because Rita forgot the memory stick for her camera).

Distance: approx. 20km, which took us 4 hours 20 minutes. Temperature: 23-24C. Humidity: 72%.

Sat 22 Nov: We had arranged to go on a tour including a cruise on Doubtful Sound. This is more difficult to get to than Milford Sound as you can’t drive there. It’s also 3 times longer and 10 times larger. We had signed up with Real Journeys and went along to their Manapouri office at 9am.  We started off on a boat across Lake Manapouri, which has 34 islands in it as well as lovely clear water.  It’s the lake we overlooked from where we were staying.

Also heading to Doubtful Sound was a group of divers. It turned out that one of them was quite a senior guy at the hydro-electric power station that we would visit later on. He is an extremely keen diver and keeps a boat moored at Doubtful Sound. At the far end of the lake, we switched to a bus which was to take us over Wilmot Pass. The road was put in to help build the power station, and is in a very remote, but very pretty area.  After a few stops along the way to admire the views we came to Deep Cove on Doubtful Sound, where we boarded a large boat. It was overcast and raining intermittently, but it had rained heavily overnight.  As a result, the waterfalls were flowing down the steep hillsides.

The hills surrounding Doubtful Sound were not quite as steep or dramatic as those at Milford Sound, but the area was obviously much larger and much more remote and isolated.  It was still spectacular and beautiful, but in a slightly softer way. Again, we were lucky enough to see fur seals and more of the Fiordland Crested Penguins.

Everywhere we looked were waterfalls tumbling down the hillsides into the fiord. Most of these waterfalls are apparently temporary, only appearing after there has been rain. In addition to a very informative nature commentary by the guides, the boat also showed a number of videos, including underwater footage of the marine life in the fiords. Next time we will have to dive there.

After 3 hours on the boat, we headed back to Deep Cove, where the buses were waiting. We headed back up to Wilmot Pass and took a detour to the Manapouri Power Station. There is a steep access tunnel leading down to the control room. This is the only road in New Zealand where you drive on the right. This is either because it allows you to see more clearly how close you are to the rock; or because it’s easier to teach Kiwis to drive on the right than to teach the American contractors (who helped build it) to drive on the left!

The power station was a large undertaking that was actually built by an Australian company. It was part of a deal to allow them to build an aluminium smelter, and it provides the power for the smelter, as well as making a small contribution to the national grid.

From the power station, we headed back across Lake Manapouri, where we had a good chat about the Department of Conservation with one of the guides, who had actually trained as a marine biologist, and so was very well informed about the local environment. He also had some interesting views on various conservation projects around New Zealand and the importance of getting buy-in from the local communities.

We had dinner in the same pub as the previous night, and managed to finish trying the rest of the 8 beers they had on tap.

Apparently there are only 5 dugongs on exhibition anywhere in the world, and 2 of them are now at Sydney aquarium. There is a 10 year old male called Pig and a 4 year old female called Wuru, and they are in a 28 metre by 18 metre tank intended to replicate their natural habitat, which is the coastal waters in northern Australia.

You can find out more from this Sydney Morning Herald article.

Fri 21 Nov: Fiordland gets so much rain that they measure it in metres. Typically it gets between 7 and 9 metres per year, so we were expecting a fairly damp day. But our good fortune continued. It started overcast as we headed to the Humboldt Falls but by the time we got to Milford Sound it was another beautiful day. The Humboldt Falls are supposedly the tallest falls near a road, and are approximately 270 metres high. It was about a 20 minute walk up to a viewing platform.

From there we headed to Milford Sound. We had to stop at The Homer Tunnel as it is only wide enough for one lane of traffic, but there were a number of Kea there to entertain us. These are New Zealand parrots and are quite cheeky and didn’t seem scared of people. I suppose they perform for all the tour buses in the hope of picking up food.  They are quite stocky compared to the more tropical parrots, which presumably helps them keep warm.

For those of us used to nice, well-lit, smooth tunnels, The Homer Tunnel is a bit of a revelation. To start with it’s over 1km long and is not lit at all. But more noticeable to me, it’s not at all smooth. What I mean by that is that it’s been hacked out of the bare rock and it’s not been lined unlike the tunnels in Hong Kong. I suppose it makes sense, it just wasn’t what I was expecting. Nor was the spectacular view as we emerged from the other side and headed down the steep road towards Milford Sound itself.

We parked and walked along the coast and out onto the mudflats. The Sounds in this region are actually misnamed, as they are Fiords. The distinction is that Sounds are V-shaped river valleys which fill up with sea water up as the sea level rises. Fiords are created by glaciers gouging their way through the countryside and leaving U-shaped valleys in their wake. These fiords have very steep walls and can also be very deep. What makes this particular area so interesting is that the heavy rainfall means there is a constant layer of fresh water on top of the salt water. When it rains the trees absorb the water, and it gradually leaches out and into the fiords. But on its way it picks up a lot of tannins, which means it has a reddy colour and this helps to block out a lot of the sunlight. Consequently the salt water below it is very dark, which means that you get a lot of deep-dwelling species of coral and fish at a much shallower depth than usual. Also the narrow, deep nature of the fiords means that there is very little sediment and the water tends not to be churned up, so it is usually very clear. We didn’t have time to dive it, but we did visit an underwater observatory, of which more later.

Lunch involved the usual New Zealand pie, to which we were starting to get addicted. Then we wandered through the town to the pier and decided to do a cruise of Milford Sound. From the water the surrounding mountains and sea cliffs looked even more impressive. We were also lucky enough to see New Zealand Fur Seals, and Fiordland Crested penguins.

We were on a relatively small boat and the skipper was also a diver. So we spent quite a bit of time chatting to  him about diving in the Fiordland area. Not surprisingly, he is a big fan and thoroughly recommends the diving in this region. Maybe next time, but only if I’ve got a drysuit! Anyway he was a really interesting character and he was brave enough to let Rita drive his boat.

He dropped us off at the Underwater Observatory at Harrison Cove, where they gave us more information on the way the area formed, and repeated the information about the freshwater layer on top of the sea water, as well as the marine life that lives in the fiords. We then went downstairs to the viewing platform which is at a depth of 10 metres. In various trays you could see black and red coral, which normally lives much deeper. There are also sponges, anemones, tube worms, snake stars, plus a variety of fish. In case of storms, or if the freshwater layer gets too thick, they are able to lower the trays containing the coral. The overnight forecast was for heavy rain, so they were concerned about the freshwater layer, and also whether they would be able to get in the following day. So as a precaution they did lower the trays as we were leaving (we were the last group). Then another boat picked us up and took us back to the town.

We drove back out in the late afternoon, stopping briefly at some of the impressive sites, including Mirror Lake. Finally we ended up in Manapouri, where we stayed at a great place right next to a lively pub. Of the 8 beers on tap, I think we sampled at least 5.

Thu 20 Nov: We headed down to the lakefront to the bar / cafe at the station to see if they did breakfast and got a bit of a surprise. Having seen the steam engines for the Kingston Flyer in the yard the previous night, we suddenly found ourselves facing an entire train. It turns out that it runs 14km up the track to Fairlie every morning at 10am, and by chance we happened to get there 5 minutes before it left. It was even more impressive in action than it had been in the yard, particularly as it was a beautiful morning with a clear, blue sky.

After a good breakfast we headed south, but after quarter of an hour we saw smoke in the distance. Sure enough we were passing Fairlie, and the Flyer had turned round and was on its way back to Kingston. So from not even knowing it existed, we were fortunate enough to see it setting off on both legs of its journey. Rita even managed to get some video of it.

We had a lot of driving pencilled in for today so we pressed on towards Te Anau, which is the gateway to Fiordland. From there we were planning to head towards Milford Sound which is around 120km away. We got to Te Anau around lunchtime, and stocked up on food, wine and beer from the supermarket. Petrol prices were a little more than I’d been expecting and we’d been warned not to try filling up in Milford Sound, but I thought we had enough left to get there and back. I did find myself driving very conservatively to make sure we didn’t run out, which had the added bonus of giving us more chance to admire the scenery.

First stop along the road to Milford Sound was Mistletoe Lake, where we had a circular nice walk down to the lakeshore. We stopped at a number of other places along the way including Mirror Lake, which are best seen in the evening or early morning when the wind has dropped. Then you can see why it got its name. Even in early afternoon the water was very clear and you could see trout swimming lazily along below the surface. We also stopped for a walk at Lake Gunn, through a lovely beech forest. We crossed the divide then took a right turn towards Humboldt Falls, which are apparently the tallest falls that are near a road, a bit of a contrived claim to fame, but they were impressive despite that.

Along the road to Humboldt falls is the Hollyford camp. This was set up by a guy called Murray Gunn, the son of Davy Gunn, a legend in those parts. He was one of the early farmers, but he also mapped the area and was a pioneer in establishing a tourism industry. He was most famous for a 20 hour journey he made in 1936 to raise the alarm about a plane crash, which led to the four survivors being rescued. Given how rugged the country is, completing his trek in 20 hours was a remarkable achievement. He was killed fording a river on Christmas Day in 1955. The Hollyford camp has a small museum with details of his life and times, as well as a lot of artefacts and newspaper clippings relating to the region and the pioneers who lived there.

We pitched out tents and cooked dinner surrounded by clouds of sand flies, which are a type of black fly and they have a nasty bite. They are the worst aspect of Fiordland. When it finally went dark, we trekked down the road and found a small glowworm dell. New Zealand has a number of areas where you find glowworms. They lower silken threads, like fishing rods, and through a chemical reaction they are able to generate a light from their backsides (so the light really does shine out of their arses). This attracts insects which they catch on the silken threads, providing their food.

Male Beaked Whale (from BBC website)

Male Beaked Whales have 2 tusks which stick out on the outside of their mouths. They use them to scratch each other, leaving patterns of scars. But they don’t seem to use them for eating, as they have a diet made up mainly of squid.

Recent research has used DNA analysis which suggests that they evolved as a secondary sexual signal to help females choose males within their own species. Apparently the various species of beaked whales are very similar in colour and shape. However the tusks do seem to vary significantly between species.

The above photo comes from the BBC, and you can read their article and see a video from their website.