Diving at Little Barrier Island (March 2, 2008)

Oh my goodness!! Is this an actual up to date blog posting?! Yes, its true, these events occurred only yesterday. We have decided to interupt the perfect-dated order of the blog to bring you photos of our most recent experience in the crazy land of NZ! Below is a map of the Hauraki Gulf, showing Little Barrier Island north of Auckland. It is about an hour away from Auks, and for those of you who we took to Pakiri Beach, the dive shop is located in the town of Leigh if you can recall. We took off from Goat Island harbor and under cloudy skies we arrived at our first dive site just off shore 35 minutes later.



Just a little educational sidebar, the Island "is an extinct volcanic cone from an eruption 1-3 million years ago. It is roughly circular in shape about 6 km (4 miles) across. The island is steeply sloping, and deeply dissected by ravines." You can see these in some of the photos which cut into the cliffside, creating waterfall after waterfall, which are apparently much more spectacular and numerous after the rain.

No people live on the island and you need a permit to land there as it is a wildlife sanctuary. It is home to about 100 Tuataras (picture below) which are an endangered species and a living fossil measuring up to 80cm in length. They are reptiles, not lizards who have been around for 200 million years (with dinosaurs). Craziness. Unfortunately, we have only seen them in the zoo. They are only found in the North Island of NZ and no where else in the world.

The whole scene had a very mysterious and powerful feel, very Jurassic Park-like. In Maori, the island is called Hauturu, meaning "resting place of the winds."







Anyways, back to diving. Here we are on the boat, well me anyhow. Jode is in the water trying to recover her delicate tummy after the boat ride out.




Well, as you can see by the look on her face below, it didn't really work. But our lil trooper geared up anyhow and took her giant stride into the temperate 18 degree celsius water. The wetsuits alone could make you sick. They are double the thickness of any we have ever worn. We wore a long john type pant that came up over our shoulders and then a jacket that secured right up the neck and under the bum velcroing in front on the belly. We had booties on and an optional hood that we both decided to forego, trying to limit our clausterphobia. Wearing over 20 pounds of weight (double what we're used to) around your waist doesn't really help much either. The water actually wasn't too bad, but apparently very different from tropical like we are used to, as we were about to find out...













There's Jodi popping up after entry. Excellent work. And after a quick vomit into the turbulent sea, she decided she was good to go under. What we were not prepared for was how unbelievably strong the currents were, not even close to anything we experienced in tropical waters. And due to the enormous amount of weight and the extra buoyancy of the thick suits, controlling your buoyancy under water was no easy task.

We were trained to use our breathing as a large part of determining your position underwater (so you don't shoot to the top or sink to the bottom) that had virtually no bearing here. It is all controlled by your BCD (buoyancy control device), a vest which you inflate and deflate to stay at a controlled level under water. The boat captain said if you are used to tropical waters you will adjust 3-5 times to get neutral buoyancy, here, he said it would take 20-40 times to do it, especially if you are new to the conditions.

So pair this technique with the violent currents and it becomes pretty unnerving down there. Needless to say, this did not help Jodi's nausea and eventually she resurfaced to relieve her stomach yet again. We did manage to see a huge Ray throughout all this which was pretty awesome, he was at least 1.5 meters wide and maybe 5m from us. Pretty amazing watching him rise from the bottom and swim away.

Below are a picture of the island from the boat and of some of the crayfish that more experienced divers were "hunting" for at this site.




Now I am no hero in this story either. These are photos of me at the surface after the second dive. Totally a forced smile, I was nearly crying just minutes earlier. After we descended the group dispersed (well 2 got taken by the currents) and my dive buddy was lost (the divemaster), and out of a group of 8 was now 2, me and some random guy whom I would not let out of my site. So I was already breathing hard from fighting the currents and finally getting neutral buoyancy (after sinking to the bottom and being dragged by the current backwards). I looked around and everyone was gone but Tim, whom I didn't know, but thankfully he stuck close as he saw I was alone and so was he. Now people do dive alone, but not me, you have to take advanced courses that teach you how to navigate and blah blah blah. I do not have this ability. Everything looked the same to me, no one really was around, I was already breathing fast and hard, and then clausterphobia set in, followed by panic.




All you wanna do at that point is go up. But its bad if you do this too fast and sometimes it means the end of the dive which is really disapointing. So eventually after much self talk to not panic, I calmed down, but then got my ass kicked again by the constant sweeping currents, so gave the signal and ascended. Tim came up too and equally had no idea where anyone was, so thought it was not a bad idea. He was probably not about to cry though! So the boat was pretty near, we found the divemaster and followed some bubbles and descended again. After much of the same experience and realizing I had used almost ALL my air in the first episode (that takes A LOT of heavy breathing), I decided to not be a hero and call it a day. My Dad said to me once, "Don't be a hero." This was one of those situations (and there has been many on our travels), where one realizes the meaning of random and weird 'Dad advice.' Fascinating isn't it? To find meaning in what was always thought to be bull*%$@ ramblings is quite enlightening.














Here I am climbing onto the boat with a smile, a little more genuine now that it was all over, thinking about how crazy it was down there. And there is Jodi havin a lie down trying to not throw up on yet another dive boat. Poor thing. All in all, it was a good experience and no regrets. There were some pretty cool fish down there and the Ray of course and the scenery was beautiful. I think if you can cope all alone 10-18m below and under those conditions with no way of verbally communicating all the crazy thoughts in your head, coping with other things above water shouldn't be so tough.




Once I was back on the boat we had to go pick up the guys with whom I originally descended. They had drifted at least 300m away from the dive site. And got quite a lecture from the dive operators. So I am glad I did the right thing! We were told to not be too hard on ourselves as this was apparently quite a hard dive and NZ has some of the world's toughest conditions. We are really glad we had a go at it, and will for surely dive again, but maybe from the shore and in warmer, more calm waters!! Boy did we have a good laugh at what a wonderful and relaxing day off we had...




Below:
- Jodi reflecting upon the day...
- Coming into the harbor
- On the drive home we passed this vineyard..."Its called the what now?!" Who are these mysterious winemakers, must be compensating for something...
- Hey, let's go toboganning! Weird. Its barely even a hill. Give it up NZ, you can't have everything
- Driving home at dusk






















Thanks for listening to yet another ranting-over-explained-anecdote. I love to talk. Don't forget to look at the previous posts below which are all new pictures of Karen and Jenn's time here. The next post will be reverting back to December '07 with the girls.