Diving Thoughts

New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric  Research (NIWA), has been tagging great white sharks around Stewart and Chatham islands for the last 5 years. So far they have tagged 25 with tags that stay on for 6 – 9 months before floating to the surface. The biggest shark they have tagged is nicknamed “Shack” and is a 4.8 metre long. Shack has recently set a world record for the deepest known dive by a great white, of 1200 metres.

NIWA’s research has shown that between April and September the sharks are moving from New Zealand to warmer waters during the winter. One shark was found to have spent 6 months in Norfolk island, which is in the Pacific, north of New Zealand.

The research aims to improve our knowledge of the sharks’ behaviour and habits, which may help to prevent them being accidentally killed by the fishing industry. Although with the price of shark fin being what it is, I suspect it won’t help them being deliberately killed by the shark fin industry.

More on this in the New Zealand Herald.

Two cousins, diving at the Twins near Whitiangi in the North Island of New Zealand, were hassled by a 2 metre bronze whaler on Monday (15 Feb) afternoon. They were about 10 metres from their boat when the shark approached them in what seemed an aggressive manner. As it swam at them for a second time, they threw an old anchor that they had picked up at it. This deterred it briefly, but they then defended themselves with a cray hook, before one of them kicked it in the head with his fin, giving them time to get back on the boat.

The cousins had hung a couple of freshly caught kingfish on the side of their boat, which may well have got the shark’s attention. Clinton Duffy of the Department of Conservation said that the bronze whaler is a large shark, but has quite small teeth as it generally feeds on school fish. They are generally not aggressive but can become excited when there is blood or dead fish in the water.

The above photo is from the New Zealand Herald, and you can read more details here.

According to the New Zealand Herald, 63 pilot whales beached themselves at Colville Bay on the Coromandel Peninsula on Sunday.  Department of Conservation workers and hundreds of volunteers managed to get around 2/3rds of them back out to sea, but the others died on the beach. These are being buried by Maori from a local iwi.

105 long-finned pilot whales died at Farewell Spit, which is in the north of the South Island. A tourist plane reported seeing them, but 2/3rd of them had already died by the time Department of Conservation people got there, and the others were in such a bad way that they had to be euthanised. Since it is part of a National park, these will be left to decompose.

Presumably local authorities are expecting an influx of Japanese tourists, or maybe their whaling fleet will be recalled from the Southern Ocean to take advantage of this unexpected bounty! All in the name of scientific research of course!

The full story and more photos are on the New Zealand Herald’s website.

When we think of entanglement hazards in Hong Kong, we’re normally thinking about fishing nets, but a diver in Wellington got trapped in weeds at Owhiro Bay earlier today. He’s now in a serious condition in Wellington hospital.

There is more in the New Zealand Herald.

Tue 25 Nov:  We were up quite early and checked in with Fox Glacier Guiding about the glacier hike we’d got planned. As expected, it was off, partly because of the incessant rain, but mainly because the access road to the glacier had been washed away. In fact the news was even worse, as the roads north and south were both blocked by either landslides or flooding. And still it kept on raining. The locals seemed confident that the road north would clear quickly once it stopped raining, but I was more skeptical. Having seen size of the drainage channels, I should have had more faith!

Around 10am we headed north to Franz Josef Glacier, the slightly better known of the 2 west coast glaciers, and we were able to get up to a viewpoint overlooking it. There we bumped into a couple of Department of Conservation people who were repairing the viewpoint. They pointed out the channel where the river below the glacier normally runs. The river was several times its normal size and had engulfed the track that led up to the base of the glacier. We decided to view it from a distance!

By the time we left Franz Josef, the rain has stopped and judging from the traffic, the way north was open. We decided to chance it.

The road was still incredibly wet and we did come across the occasional landslide, but it was passable. Not doing the glacier hike had put us a day ahead of schedule, but we decided to try and spend that time up in the Nelson or Marlborough regions,  where hopefully the weather was better. In fact Nelson was having just as much rain as we were, but fortunately it had improved by the time we got there.  Anyway that meant we had a long day’s driving ahead of us.

We stopped for a very late lunch in Hokitika, a really pleasant town that used to have a big jade, or pounamu,  industry. Pounamu is also known as greenstone, NZ jade or nephrite. Its importance has reduced in recent years, but pounamu carving is still an important part of the local economy, and there are a number of shops and carvers. We contributed to the economy by buying some nice presents for the family. The staff at the cafe where we had lunch were all very friendly and the cafe itself has a massive collection of teapots all around its walls – very unusual.

We went through Greymouth, which is one of the major population centres on the west coast and is a port, from which coal is exported. It also houses Monteith’s brewery, and we’d been sampling their products throughout our trip.

Despite the brewery, we didn’t stop in Greymouth. Instead we pressed on to Punakaiki, or the pancake rocks. These are made of limestone, which has been heavily eroded. There are also a series of blowholes which are very active at high tides.

We also saw a Weka there, which is a sort of flightless woodhen which is endemic to New Zealand. A lot of New Zealand’s birds are flightless, most famously the Kiwi. This is because up until the arrival of man, they had very few predators, so they lost the ability to fly. Anyway this weka was very patient, and allowed us to take a number of photographs before it wandered off into the bushes.

After spending some time on the rocks, we carried on to a large cave not far from the side of the road, which was quite interesting.

We carried on north and finally got to Charleston, which is between Punakaiki and Westport. It was founded as a gold mining town during a major gold rush in 1867. Now it is a lot smaller, with probably around 500 people living there. From our point of view it was the last place we were likely to be able to get a bed for the night before we turned inland towards Nelson. We stayed at a lovely little backpackers run by a woman who used to own a Westport guesthouse, but had moved south for a bit of peace and quiet. There were only 4 guest rooms, but they were very nice rooms. It’s a shame we didn’t get more time to enjoy them, but that plan fell apart as soon as we got to the pub.

We walked in to meet the landlord, who was the rudest person we’d met in New Zealand and didn’t make us feel at all welcome. However there were a couple of locals in there who assured us that he was always like that. After we’d complimented him on his pies, which were very good, and he found out that we were from Hong Kong where he’d been 6 times for the rugby sevens, he turned out to be a really good bloke. The others there were a mixed group, including the owner of another backpackers who also has a stock of good local greenstone and does some carving. Then there were a bloke who runs a company supporting the mining industry and one of his people. The company owner was originally a geologist who had worked all over Asia. He was very knowledgeable, and was complaining about the price of coal dropping from $300 a ton to $100 a ton because of a bunch of US bankers being idiots.

From them we found out a bit more about Charleston and life on the west coast. For instance I had thought that the tour guides who stay there in the tourist season would be very welcome. In a sense they are because they’re a friendly bunch and bring in some extra money, but what would be more useful to the local community is families who are there year-round. Then their children will support the school bus and the father can help out with the volunteer fire brigade.

It turned out that everyone except the landlord were part of the volunteer fire brigade, he’d left because he got fed up of Auckland imposing petty regulations that didn’t acknowledge the particular issues of local, rural life. It turns out that the fire brigade is most active with car crashes, which they blamed on tourists driving on the wrong side of the road! We promised to be very careful!

All in all it was one of the most memorable days we spent in New Zealand. Not for the scenery, which was impressive, albeit shrouded in rain all day, but for the people we met along the way. The guides who had to give us the bad news about our cancelled glacier hike, the staff at the cafe in Hokitika, the DOC guys at Franz Josef, but most of all the group we met in the pub at Charleston.

We found the West Coast people that we met to be a little reserved at first, even stand-offish. But after a few beers, they opened up and seemed to be very independent people, who live down on the west coast in tough conditions so that they don’t have people telling them what to do all the time. The ones we met in Charleston were quite critical of the Helen Clark government, the nanny state as they called it, and were more optimistic about John Key who had recently won the election.

Dolphins are normally cast as the good guys, maybe it’s the perpetually smiling face that helps.  And while they are undoubtedly inquisitive and often seem friendly, we shouldn’t forget that they are wild animals.

Earlier this week in New Zealand a swimmer had to be rescued after a dolphin which has been named Moko wouldn’t let her return to the beach. Moko hangs around Mahia beach, east of Wairoa on the east coast of the North Island, and has a habit of playing with swimmers. On this occasion, when a swimmer tried to get back to shore, Moko kept diving next to her and circling her. Eventually she had to grab hold of a buoy and shout for help. Despite having a wetsuit she was cold and exhausted, but was eventually rescued by some people in a dinghy.

So no matter how cuddly dolphins might appear, we should not forget that they are powerful marine predators who may not be aware of our limitations in the water.

For more information there is an article in the New Zealand Herald, from where I borrowed the above photograph.

A 50 year old man has died off the coast of Little Barrier Island in the Hauraki Gulf. He was diving with family and friends when he failed to surface as expected. He was later found on the sea bed, but despite medical attention he died before reaching the shore. Police have impounded his gear and reported that he was apparently in 4-5 metres of water.

The New Zealand Herald has the story. Apparently he was free-diving, but according to the Herald’s story he was the only one “wearing snorkelling gear”. I can only assume that they meant diving gear.

Last month the New Zealand Herald reported a rather sad story about a missing memorial plaque.  In August 1979 John Barrie Catton was diving a reef north of the Northern Arch in the Poor Knights with two friends when he failed to surface. His body was never found.

3 or 4 months later, a group of divers placed a bronze plaque 37 metres deep at Northern Arch, in memory of him. This year the plaque appears to have gone missing, and the suspicion is that it has been stolen by another diver, which if it’s true would be very disappointing.

The full story is in the New Zealand Herald.

Mon 24 Nov: It was raining lightly when we set off towards Haast Pass. We stopped to look at some waterfalls, then stopped at Davis Flats for a walk up a Bridle path. The path goes all the way up to Haast Pass, but we were only going to go part of the way. It was a nice track alongside the river, heading gradually upwards. Quite muddy in places, but fairly easy walking. Eventually we crossed the river and headed up through some woods, before finally turning round and heading back the way we came. It was a lovely walk and the high point of the day.

Back in the car and the rain picked up a bit and by the time we reached Haast Pass itself, it was bucketing down. As we drove down the other side the engine started to smell, so we pulled off just after a bridge and left it to cool down, while we went for a look at the river, which was cascading down a narrow gorge.

Back in the car we carried on heading towards Haast, when we had the chance to be heroes. Well, perhaps that’s a slight exaggeration, but it sounds good. We had slowed down significantly because of the torrential rain, but not everyone had been quite so cautious. We came around a bend to find someone flagging us down, and with a huge truck on one side of the road we didn’t have a lot of choice but to stop. In the ditch on the left hand side up to its wheel arches in mud/water was an 18 seat tour bus towing a trailer carrying bikes. The large truck was there to pull it out, which looked as though it was going to be a bit tricky. Our part in the proceedings wasn’t as dramatic – we got to ferry 2 of the stranded passengers into Haast. It turned out that they were part of a group of around 12 Germans who were doing a cycling tour of New Zealand. Given how hilly it was, we were impressed, although they did say that they’d take the bus up the hills, and cycle down them. We dropped them off at a hotel in Haast, and stopped there for lunch, hoping the rain would clear.

By the time we left it was still pelting down, but the Germans’ driver had turned up. They had managed to get his bus out of the ditch, and it only seemed to have minor damage to the front. I think they’d abandoned their plans for the rest of the day because as we left they were getting stuck into large quantities of alcohol and all having a good laugh about their experience. That was in stark contrast to what our 2 passengers had been saying about the driver while they were in our car.

We headed north. The rain did ease up a bit, but had been so heavy the roads were running with water and visibility wasn’t great. Finally we made it to Fox Glacier, and headed into town to find somewhere to stay. Then we checked with Fox Glacier Guiding, with whom we had arranged to do a full day glacier hike  the following day. They weren’t very optimistic that it would be going but told us to check back in the morning.

We tried driving down to Lake Matheson, which has spectacular views of Mounts Cook and Tasman on a clear day. This wasn’t a clear day, and the road had so much water on it, that we turned round and  opted for an early dinner and a beer in our backpackers instead.  We had expected the West Coast to be wet. And it is!

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.

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.

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.