Leigh and the Poor Knights

This week we traveled up to Leigh to snorkel at Goat Island. Goat Island was the first marine reserve in New Zealand. The area is a no take zone, meaning you cannot fish commercially or recreationally in the area. Snorkeling was amazing!!! We saw really big snapper, trigger (or leather jacket) fish, spotted wrasse, banded wrasse, and so many others!


After Goat Island, we drove up the coast a little further to snorkel at the Poor Knights. The Poor Knights are another marine reserve, but further away from the coast. The night before we left we boarded the Pacific Hideaway (our boat for the following day) to hear a talk by Wade Doak. He was easily the coolest man I have ever met! He was around 70 years old, and one of the pioneers of diving. When he was a young man he created a diving helmet out of his dad's coal bucket, rubber tubing, and a pump on land to be pumped by his two girlfriends. (Advice from Wade: always have two girlfriends). He and some of his friends (years later) also discovered a shipwreck off the coast of New Zealand. In the wreck they found gold! One of our academic field leaders, Sally, is a good friend of his and they found all these gold coins. What a magical night. We even got to see his videos of diving the Poor Knights. Everything was so colorful!!!

The first place that we snorkel at was this little cove that was full of life! I saw another eagle ray (similar to a sting ray but smaller). We also saw tons and tons of desmoiselle fish. It was amazing. The next place we went to was Rico Rico cave. It is the largest natural sea cave in the Southern Hemisphere. Inside we started signing. The cave had amazing acoustics, an 8 second echo. Then we jumped out of the boat and snorkeled inside the cave!!!!


We swam to the back of the cave. It was incredibly dark and there were salps everywhere! Salps are similar to jelly-fish but they wont sting you. There were thousands of salps. It was amazing! We had to stick to the wall so we didn't get lost inside the cave.

The third dive we went to a little tunnel and swam though. We had to wait for the waves to push us through this little crevice. It was really shallow inside and we were weaving in and out of the kelp. A few of us even saw an eel! He was about 5 inches in front of me. So cool! We got stuck inside the little cove and had to crawl over some of the rocks and swim wicked hard to get back to the boat.

We did one more dive after lunch. It was just such a cool day! Here are some more pictures.