Exploring The Moana At Night

Last Christmas we bought dive lights but never tried them out so this Christmas we have used them. As we had not been out at night before into the moana we read up on safety tips and decided to ignore the one that said, "Keep an eye on the lights on shore" as there are no lights here.

Heading out our first night we timed it so that we would be out at dusk and by the time we finished it would be totally dark. We also choose a rock pool so we would not have to deal with surges while we got used to being in the dark in the water with only our head lights and torch. Of course I also had to work out how to take photos at night underwater.

If anyone is going to attempt this I recommend to start at dusk in a calm area so that you get used to the lessening light as this worked well for us.

Two nights later we headed out again and this time it was fully dark when we headed out, and this time into a gut. Wow! What a world waiting to explore! Fish sleeping, packies out and about and the eels! I saw a white eel, about 600mm long and narrow with black stiripe markings on its top fin (running from the edge to the body in lines) but as I have not worked out how to get good photos missed it, even through it spent about 5 minutes twinning around carpophyllum. We were wondering if this was a juvie of something - would you have any idea @clinton?

We also saw, what we thought may be a conger, because of the wide head poking out then retreating.

A New Zealand Piper sped past, stopped, reversed to see what we were doing, then took off again.

I so have to learn how to photograph all of these amazing creatures at night. Next week are nice lows so will be having another go and hopefully I can get photos of all the amazing creatures I have not seen and I missed these times around!

Posted on 31 de dezembro de 2017, 03:50 AM by tangatawhenua