For years I have been saying that Owhiro Bay is my favourite dive site and that I have done 100’s of dives here.
It turns out I was lying or at least exaggerating. A count of my logbook earlier this year showed I had only done 197 dives here since I started diving in 1997.
I completed my Open Water Course here in February 2007 – looking at my logbook I wasn’t too impressed. “Supposedly some wrecks out here but didn’t see much” I do remember being paranoid about buoyancy and losing my buddy or my instructor so I guess I wasn’t looking around much.
There are wrecks out here – 4 to be exact.
Yung Pen – sunk 12th December 1982. Straight out front in the channel, the hull section lies in 5-7m of water and is home to crays, moki and marble fish.
Progress – sunk 1st May 1931. Out to the left the most obvious section is the ‘Boiler’ home to many baby cray.
Wellington – sunk 7th March 1874. Little remains from this historic ship but you can see the anchor and the donkey boiler out to the right.
Cyrus – sunk 7th March 1874. You have to look closely to see remains of this historic ship but some copper and brass fittings can be found.
Located on the South Coast this site is exposed to some of the best and worst conditions Wellington has to offer. I found this out early on when I was caught in a rip. We were at the Yung Pen within a two minutes and it took another twelve to crawl back to the exit against the current, needless to say I have never dived the site again with southerly swell.
Now part of the Taputeranga Marine Reserve it is great to see the marine life recover and divers able to see a wide variety of marine life including blue cod, red and blue moki, marblefish, butterfish, conger eels, crayfish, octopus and more.
I was lucky enough to dive this site last week and log my 200th dive at Owhiro Bay.
Now I won’t be lying when I say this is my favourite site and I have done 100’s of dives here.
Claire