My next passion:SHELTERED SHORES: Harbour, Estuary & Mangrove

Ecologists now see the coastline as a series of habitats which fall into two major

categories: those that are sheltered from the wind energy of the open ocean and those

exposed to its full force. Modern man threatens each habitat with a special set of

problems. We must learn to appreciate these marine worlds and to live within them

without causing harm. As so many life forms rapidly become extinct, we are realising that it is no longer individual species we must protect, but their entire habitats.

From an ecological viewpoint, the richness or biomass of coastal habitats depends on

their stability. Sand and gravel beaches provide an insecure and shifting environment for a reduced range of life forms. Those adapted to a burrowing existence form very dense populations in such areas - pipis and other bivalves, tube worms and swimming crabs. Further up the shore the sand dunes provide a very fragile habitat in which the least disturbance of plant cover can cause erosion. (In Holland access to beaches across sand dunes is now restricted to foot bridges.)

The boulder beach is the harshest life zone of them all. Every storm tosses the big stones around and rubs them together, giving them their clean, close-grained surfaces. Despite the diminished range of organisms in such areas, life is tenacious, and small, fast-moving creatures such as crustaceans manage to find refuge from predators among the boulders and feed on the life-giving currents.

The richest marine worlds are the most sheltered parts of our coast: our harbours,

estuaries and mangroves. Mud is the basis of it all: the messy places we insist on “tidying up”, the mud flats we reclaim, the inlets we straighten with causeways, the swamps and wetlands we drain for pastures, all the gentlest meeting places of land and sea, are the “black gold” of tomorrow.

In thick, black mud thrive millions of bacteria which readily convert decaying matter into

nutrients, a process on land well known to soil technologists.  The difference between

clay and fertile soil is the presence of countless useful bacteria which convert animal

manure and leaf mould into plant food.

SHELTERED SHORES CD ROM

From exploring the riches of the mangrove community

by day and by night I continued into the estuary, river

mouth and harbour, tracing the energy pathways created

by this highly diverse part of our coastline.  This is the

region where living conditions are optimal: abundant

shelter, sunlight and nutrient supply result in complex

communities that are most accessible for us to study and

enjoy.  Here, on our doorsteps, we can experience a

complete biosphere from sea plants to trees; mosses,

lichens and epiphytic ferns; shellfish, crabs and shrimps;

fishes galore; insects and birds.  For my wife Jan and

me it was as satisfying as the coral reefs and offshore

islands we have explored.  This CD Rom is the result of

over thirty years during which we have collected images,

video and first hand experiences.  To fit on here my

movies, more than an hour long, are highly compressed.

Please regard them as a bonus sampler. High quality

versions are available on DVD disc: www.wadedoak.com 

MOTUKARORO ISLAND MARINE RESERVE

Harbour Riches    Wade Doak

I have descended thirty metres down the tumbled rock walls of a small island just within

the entrance to Whangarei Harbour - “meeting place of the whales”.   Aubrey, Passage or

Motukaroro Island now a Marine Reserve, is about the size of a large cruise ship but much 

beamier: 200 x 100 m.

It lies 18 kilometres downstream from a city; 300 metres from a major oil refinery and

supertanker port.  Twelve hundred hectares of mangroves and vast expanses of mud flat

and channels drain their nutrient riches through a deep, narrow throat beneath the crags of

a mythic volcanic mountain.

Around me in the half light, ghostly white, cardboard thin john dories, squadrons of them,

stalk their quarry.  Jack-in-a-box jaws flash open and shut. I cannot see their prey in the

gloom. I glimpse a school of silvery snapper at the edge of vision.

I have hiphopped ten storeys from the pohutukawa trees overhanging the calm water’s

edge, where herons and gulls in the glow of the late sun wait out the high tide and the

return of their intertidal feeding zone.  I’d stepped from our inflatable onto a knee deep

flat rock. Jan passed the video camera and I slid in.   Surprisingly warm - even for late

autumn.  Quite turbid with a high load of visible particles.   A hazy five metres of vision.

Initially I felt a little disappointed.  Nowhere near as clear as my beloved Matapouri

mangrove creek, nor Whangateau’s blue channel.  But I wanted to check out this location

as perhaps the acme of mangrove productivity and export.

Kelp fronds on short stems, coated with silt. Richly encrusted rocks.  Weed eating

parore, drummer and butterfish darting among the canopy.  Myriad juvenile spotties with

bright yellow markings nipping at life on the kelp leaves.  Then a swarm of oblique

swimming blennies, [triplefins] plankton feeders from the open sea.  And demoiselles nipping at the

current, flitting about with their scissor tails like undersea swallows. Even small blue

maomaos.  I never dreamt of seeing such oceanic fishes within a harbour.

At ten metres an abrupt transition: the kelp forest stops and encrusting life expands, along

with a dramatic increase in reef fish, both in variety and abundance.  The profile is steep

but not vertical: big volcanic rocks with sandy terraces.  These rocks often have flat faces

and over them jewel anemones spread in sheets of opulence: each colony of the same

colour: mauve, wine red, apricot, green, lolly pink - exquisite, vibrant hues that seem to

fluoresce as the light diminishes.  I feel I am on a coral reef.

At 15 metres I just stop and stare in amazement.  The density of fishes is unbelievable.

Above me the sun is dimmed by a cyclone of jack mackerel that weave around me in a

living cylinder.  Like sharks, out of the gloom massive, bullet shaped bodies whirl in to

scrutinize me: large kingfish in squads of five to eight, bigger than I have seen for some

years.  Among the rocks, in hollows and near ledges the reef fish are busy.  I do a video

run trying to compress the diversity of species into a brief time frame.  A butterfly perch

and a triggerfish cross my screen, giving way to a skittish lumbering marblefish and a

weaving group of large spotties and scarlet wrasses.  A big male banded wrasse dashes to

and fro in a rocky alcove.  I veer to the left: a red moki rests beneath a ledge.  It exits and

I follow close to its broad tail as several triggerfish and wrasses cross my path towards an

overhang where slender roughies and big eye, night plankton feeders, dart around in the

gloom, awaiting dusk.  My sequence finishes on a mottled blenny resting on a rock like

an owl.

Then, beneath the ledge I notice a long-legged, red rock crab, its ornate carapace reminds

me of the cockney pearly kings who decorate their clothes with shiny buttons.  While

crabs often flee the camera this one is big and shows no fear.  I watch its elaborate mouth

parts flicking as it combs the water for plankton.  Then it reaches up, grasps the rock

ceiling and swings up so that its tail is towards me.  Upside down it rotates to face the

camera and resumes feeding in a topsy turvy pose.  Nearby a pair of ghost shrimps waft

like sporty helicopters.

Amidst the anemone colonies nudibranchs crawl and triplefin blennies pounce and roost:

mottled, masked, lined, banded, crested, yellow-black - a variety to equal any offshore

island scene.  A pair of mimic blennies hover sinuously, trying to bite the sides of a

spotty who may be deceived into thinking these pirates are just harmless oblique

swimming blennies.

In a sandy mall I meet a herd of goatfish more numerous than I have ever seen before and

the adults are huge.  This sand must be rich in the micro fauna that they dabble and delve

for with their taste bud bearing barbels.

Glenn Edney, leading marine photographer, who has dropped down the slope nearby, is taking still photos with slow, quiet precision.  We keep clear of each other to avoid problems but a squealed signal

attracts me. He has found an octopus.  He holds out his hand, palm uppermost. Its head

flushes a variety of colours.  Then it extends a tentacle and palps Glenn’s palm gently.

We’ve been accepted by the local intelligentsia.

But there are even bigger brains in these waters.  One day while concentrating on the

viewing prism of his Hasselblad camera veteran photographer Warren Farrelly heard a

weird sound behind him.  An immense orca was looking over his shoulder.   Orca

regularly visit this harbour to hunt the stingrays that feed on molluscs over the flats:

“Meeting place of the whales!”

In the deep zone the encrusting sponges become erect and impressive.  Yellow

stalagmites; long finger sponges, organpipes and orange spheres.  Pale feathery plumes of

a hydroid colony like an elaborate hat.  A gnarled Solanderia hydroid tree like a Chinese

bonsai miniature.

With the outgoing current gaining force I surface near dusk.  Shortly this spot will

become a maelstrom, water piling up against the island as on a tanker’s bow.  I take stock

of the thriving world below my fins.  In terms of biomass and species diversity the reef

fish population around this tiny island would equal most locations in New Zealand’s

richest area, the Poor Knights Islands, but not their overall diversity.  And the fishes

would be an indicator of the diversity of the encrusting life.  Aubrey, with its powerful

currents, lack of wave violence and the enormous nutrient riches of the adjacent

mangrove forests, must be one of New Zealand’s hot spots for reef fish life - a regular

sky tower Casino!

A more detailed survey of the fish life, greatly assisted by local diver/photographer

Warren Farrelly, gives a fish count of some 50 species for the area, extraordinary for an

enclosed harbour site and a tribute to the immense power of mangrove productivity.  No

wonder that Warren and his pupils at the nearby Kamo Highschool fought for 15 years

to make the island a marine reserve, along with an area of mangroves and an expanse of

inter tidal mud flats up harbour.

End

Part 6: HOW WE STUMBLED UPON A TREASURESHIP

During this developmental period of scuba exploration we set out to explore
other offshore islands too, in the hope that we might find some area that
surpassed our beloved Poor Knights: White Island, Mayor, the Mercuries,
Aldermen, Mokohinaus and Cavallis: the east coast of New Zealand's North
Island has a necklace of undersea gems, mostly remnants of volcanic activity.
The last in the chain, White Island is still a very active volcano - as Kelly and
I were to learn in I967 when it erupted while we were taking photos of its
crater lake.* *Dive Vol 8 No 4 'White Blew'.]

We wanted to explore them all.

Most remote are the Three Kings group,forty miles off New Zealand's 

northernmost tip: Great King, Middle King and West King, along with numerous

 islets, rocks and reefs. They lie on a vast submarine mound that rises steeply

 from an ocean depth of I3,000 feet to within 200 feet of the surface. Over this

 plateau the Tasman Sea and Pacific Ocean meet in a seething rebellion: 

there is a three-hour difference in tidal movements between the east and west

coasts of New Zealand.

In this confusion of forces the tides become unpredictable. Currents change
at random, sweeping the flanks of the steep-faced island chain with roaring
tide rips, whirlpools and huge surges. The islands themselves are rugged and
inhospitable. There are no beaches. Near vertical cliffs with enormous boulders
heaped at the base, form the coastline. Anchorages are poor.

But these were virgin waters when, in I963 Kelly Tarlton and Chris Busck
had the chance to join a scientific expedition there. They had heard there were
huge schools of groper and giant kingfish, because of the tidal convergence.
One fisherman had brought back four tons of kingfish averaging sixty pounds
in weight. At that time Kelly and Chris had no serious thoughts of the Elingamite treasure. They knew the ship was there, somewhere around the
West King, but at about 200 feet, they thought. Kelly had actually written
to Lloyds of London about it but when they saw the area concerned any search
seemed futile. They had not even bothered to take along a single scuba tank.

Chris Busck gave me an account of that expedition; 'Kelly and I went purely for 

spearfishing and photography, while the rest of the party wanted to study the 

regrowth of plants and animal life since the extermination of the goats
by cullers in I946.

'Arrived at the Great King we had to throw all our gear, piece by piece,
from the dinghy to a helper on a rock and then lug it up a 300-foot cliff to
the campsite. It just about killed us.

'The camp site was in a shady nook near running water in a saddle about
400 feet above sea level. Bellbirds and parakeets flew around us all day and
large brown lizards scuttled everywhere, eating from our hands and pinching
any uncovered food. Hundreds of blowflies which normally live on corpses
in the large seagull colonies decided to try us instead. They swarmed all over
us and made mealtimes quite a trial. Most of the party of eight suffered from
a twenty- four-hour dysentery which we blamed on the flies. The silence of
the night was broken by large crashings in the undergrowth and the appropriate
noises as bug collectors lost their dinner each night!

'Each day the nature study boys clambered about the island, pouncing on
unsuspecting beetles and other insects and promptly bottling them. Skin diving
commenced when Kelly and I clambered down the cliff and changed into our
wet suits ready to dive in waters as yet untouched by man. We dived into
cold water with visibility of eighty feet and more. Hundreds of jellyfish with
eight-foot stinging tentacles floated in the sea and we had to dodge these as
we swam. A forty-pound kingfish swam up to a yard from Kelly's face, when
he was looking the other way. He was so startled he almost forgot to pull
the trigger. We decided to swim back to our base rock in case of sharks and
as we neared it I speared another forty-pound kingfish.

'Despite the northern latitude the water was much colder than at the
mainland and our feet were getting numb but we went for a short swim again
before dusk. Schools of large trevally were everywhere. There were no crays
or snapper in snorkel depth. Cutting the steaks from the kingies we wearily
climbed the cliff again and started to prepare a dinner of bullybeef and
potatoes. We spent the next three days exploring the main bay below the camp.
As we had no dinghy we did not venture out into the currents. From the cliff
tops the current patterns could be seen for miles out to sea and we had no
intention of swimming to South America!

'On the last day, however, the boat returned to take us to the Middle King
where two of the scientists wanted to look for snails. While they went ashore
Kelly and I asked Peter Sheehan, the skipper, if he would watch us while we
swam in the rip swirling around the island. He agreed so we donned our gear
and plunged in. With no jellyfish the water was sky blue and it was as clear
as any we had seen. No sooner had we broken the surface, than several small
kingies of thirty or forty pounds circled us. We ignored them, deciding to
wait for a monster, or get nothing at all, so we swam furiously to beat the
current to the shelter of the rocks.

'Maomao by the hundred and trevally swarmed round us with kingies
manoeuvring amongst them as we swam along the cliff base where the current
was least. As we rounded a small point some bigger kingfish of fifty pounds
or so came to meet us and Kelly raised his gun to fire at the biggest. I tried
to signal to wait a while, but he took no chances and let fly. The spear hit the

 gill plate at an angle and skidded off. I then returned my attention to the 

school and saw circling up from the deep two large hapuku (groper to
Southerners). One swam right up to me and I fired at point-blank range, the
spear going through his skull between the eyes and nearly out the other side.

'I looked over to Kelly who was still trying to load his gun. The other groper
swam round him while he frantically tried to free the ferrule which had jammed
on the end of the spear. Smothered obscenities poured through the end of
his snorkel as he swam to the rocks and climbed out. I hauled my fish out,
hardly believing my eyes, and laid it on a crevice. Kelly having freed the ferrule,
we reloaded and jumped back in.

'A small groper swam over a shallow reef but shied off as Kelly approached
it. We followed it into a natural gut about a hundred feet deep, and quite
dark due to the overhanging cliffs. Far below us I could see a white shape
catching the light as it moved. I looked again and saw it was another groper.
I yelled to Kelly and pointed. He dived towards it but the line to his float
pulled taut at fifty feet and he surfaced to frantically unwind more line.
Looking down again we saw not one but twenty or more white underbellies
glinting in the light, and a school of groper rose slowly towards us, circling
and twisting like trout at Rotorua.

HERDS OF HAPUKU LIKE THESE HAVE NOW VANISHED FROM NZ 

'This was too good to be true; Kelly swam down to the biggest and slammed

a spear through it, just behind the gills. Releasing his gun he surfaced and
the fish headed for the bottom, fighting nearly as well as a kingie. Kelly tried
to stop it from getting into the seaweed, but it caught the 300-pound breaking
strain line round a rock and snapped it. Kelly was quite ropable by now -the
fish appeared to be bigger than mine which weighed in at fifty-four pounds.
We took off for the boat for a new spear. Much to our dismay the skipper
decided it was time to pick up the 'snail men' and we regretfully shed our gear.
A while later we headed back to New Zealand after a fabulous week.'

Chris and Kelly organised a return voyage the following year but bad weather
cancelled it. Abel Tasman discovered the Three Kings Islands in midsummer
(4 January I643) and this is the best time to plan a trip there. To be caught
up in the area in a storm is much more risky than in the open ocean. Vast
sandbanks shift and alter with storms. The combination of tide and storm
has kept a trawler steaming for thirty-six hours trying to make headway across
the forty-mile stretch of sea. In I966 the collier Kaitawa was lost with all hands
when she tried to round the cape in the teeth of a north-easterly. We were
to learn just how tricky these waters can be and especially to fear the north-
easterly, from which there is no shelter.

The glowing tales that Chris and Kelly told us made it easy to raise
enthusiasm for another expedition. Chris arranged the food supplies and
chartered the Ahiki, the same fishing boat they had taken on their first trip.
In those days few men had knowledge of the area to match that of Peter
Sheehan. Fishing boats seldom visited those waters when there were plenty
of fish on the mainland coast."

AT THIS POINT, FOR THE STORY OF OUR TREASURE DISCOVERY,

MY BLOG REFERS READERS TO MY VERY FIRST BOOK: 

The Elingamite and its Treasure 

available on disc or download per www.wadedoak.com

 

Part 5: MY FIRST DIVES AT THE POOR KNIGHTS ISLANDS 1963

To the Poor Knights

 

IT WAS DURING my third year at Varsity that a friend told me of an
attractive blonde staff nurse called Jan Turpin who liked diving but needed
some lessons. As a consequence of that introduction, my third trip to New
Caledonia was with Jan. In I962 we returned, this time on a skindiving
honeymoon.

The fateful day had arrived when I had to enter service as a school-teacher
to repay my bond. I knew that the best diving in New Zealand was around
the Poor Knights Islands, off the coast of Northland. Kelly Tarlton had already
shifted up to Whangarei close by and was sending glowing accounts of its
scenery and clear water. The nearest teaching job I could find was at Wellsford,
a rural town fifty miles south. I applied to teach English and French to farmers'
kids and shifted north to start a family in a bright new schoolhouse, and a
warm, friendly community.

From then on I had the best diving partner anybody could wish for. While
diving in the Te Arai surf (near Wellsford) eight months pregnant with our
son Brady, Jan saw her first kingfish, just a fleeting glimpse through the barrel
of a wave. Thinking it was a shark Jan nearly gave birth there and then. Not
surprisingly our son Brady showed an early interest in diving: he descended
with me at the age of eleven to explore a sunken plane, a hundred feet down -
but I'm leaping ahead.

The May I963 issue of Dive describes my very first dive at the Poor Knights
Islands - quite a momentous occasion for me. I am still in love with those
seascapes as I write this in I984, some thirty years and many scuba tanks later.

'At I20 feet, in search of something for the pot, Rob Davy and I settled
on a rock outcrop jutting from the base of a near vertical cliff face. [* This was 

before we developed our own buoyancy compensators. I made the change

from dry to wet suit in I96I. My first proper dry suit was totally worn out in two

 years of manic diving activity.]

 

RIKORIKO -BIGGEST SEA CAVE IN THE WORLD

Nearby was the entrance to Rikoriko, a huge cave into which game fishing 

launches often sweep, outriggers, masts and all.  An enormous cave, both above 

and below water. Heavy in our compressed wet suits* we teetered precariously on flipper tips.

All around us in a 100-foot sphere of vision, masses of fish interwove as we
peered through in search of kingfish.

'A twenty-pounder swept in and Rob transfixed it.  At this depth we could
not use our floats so Rob attached his quarry to a short line.  During his struggle
to subdue the fish and extricate it from the stumpy kelp plants, a five-foot
bronze whaler shark nosed into view.  Rob's first meeting with a shark.  We
exchanged 'OK' hand signals and waited to see what would develop.  While
Rob was poking the cheeky little fellow away from his catch with the gun barrel, 

he did not see its twelve-foot brother looming on his right side, where
I stood.  Then I realised: his glass-eye, of course.  How would my buddy react
when he realised there were two sharks interested in his catch?  Any panic could
lead to disaster.  With steely strength the huge beast glided in towards us,
accompanied by a cloud of sprats.  Rob saw this shark as it made its first pass.
I breathed with relief.  Rob took it calmly, just readying his knife to sever
his catch if things got nasty.  Now we settled down to brazen things out.  Backs
to the cliff we waved the two sharks off each time they veered too close.
Belligerent movements made them wary.  Fascinated by their grace and majesty
in this silent duel of nerves, we had almost exhausted our air supply before
they gave up and vanished beyond the blue curtain.  Had we made a wild panic
rush to the surface it might have been a different story.'

I recalled the case of Maurizio Sarra, an Italian diver who had just completed
a book, My Friend the Shark. Scuba diving on the coast between Rome and
Naples with three companions, Maurizio was at I00 feet when he speared a
groper. Cutting his line free he left the gun on the bottom and swam up with
his catch. Those in the boat advised him they had seen some sharks nearby.
'I'm just going down to get my gun. I'll watch out...' He dived. Scarcely a
minute later he burst to the surface which crimsoned rapidly around him.
Despite a degree of protection from his wet suit he was grievously mauled.
His left calf was ripped off, his right calf and thigh severely lacerated. Nobody
saw the shark, but Sarra, immediately taken to hospital, repeated in his
delirium: 'What an enormous beast ... what a monster!'

The attack took place at I0 am. By 11 Sarra had received 300 stitches and
a blood transfusion. He never lost consciousness, except during the operation.
He refused to answer questions put to him about the shark, saying 'we'll talk
about it later on'. By I0 pm Maurizio Sarra had died in the oxygen tent.
Coupled with his huge loss of blood he was affected by the sudden ascent
without decompression after a prolonged dive.

That episode at the Poor Knights, coupled with the Sarra story from a very
similar area, stood me in good stead. Thereafter I was ultra-cautious about
spearing fish when there were sharks around. Not surprisingly, during our
spearfishing days sharks were frequently seen at the Knights and on a few
occasions divers were so scared they rapidly scaled the steep cliffs. 

During the early sixties, our first few years at Wellsford, exploratory dives
at the Poor Knights were intensive. Winter and summer Kelly and a hard core
bunch of Whangarei Underwater Club members would rock and roll over
that twelve-mile stretch of sea from Tutukaka. In those days only one charter
skipper was happy about taking 'damned divers' aboard. Fred Cotterill of
Matira was a very special skipper and most of us from that era count him
as a strong influence on the development of safe, deep-diving techniques. Our
group had quite a major role in pioneering deep-water scuba diving. We
developed our own low-cost buoyancy compensators to give us neutral
buoyancy at depth and a fast ride to the surface in an emergency. In this respect
our compensators were in advance of such equipment in the United States.
When the decompression meter came on the market American Skindiver magazine 

was happy to publish my article on the Poor Knights deep-diving
techniques and several other technical pieces, all the result of experiences gained
by that band of fanatics centering around Kelly Tarlton, Fred Cotterill and
the Poor Knights.

In those days Kelly would question everything. He built a high-pressure
test chamber for evaluating decompression meters, depth gauges and other
equipment and we published the results of his tests in the magazine. With
every diving fatality we would make a special effort to learn all the
circumstances, as in an aircraft disaster, and publish them fully. This displeased
some of the advertisers in the magazine, who did not appreciate anything that
might discourage people from diving, but we managed to get by and felt that
for our own personal safety, as well as others, it was essential to learn whatever
lesson might be gained from every diving tragedy. Consequently, over the
years as deep-diving activity accelerated, the fatality rate diminished. These
days proper training is obligatory and instructors can draw on the many fatality
reports we published as object lessons in teaching safe diving patterns.

 

WADE ABOVE WRECK IN LANDING BAY 160 FEET. BY KELLY TARLTON