Matiu-Somes Island may only be 5kms offshore but you feel as if you have truly escaped the hustle and bustle of Wellington!
Our last club trip of 2017 saw a group of 14 divers, a mountain of camping and diving gear and even more food caught the ferry across to the island in stunning conditions.
In the heat it seemed to take forever to get all our gear checked – there are strict biosecurity procedures on the island and we did have a lot of stuff!
But eventually we were allowed through and up to the house for lunch and relaxation for most although for those who had never been to the island it was a great opportunity to explore and meet some of the wildlife – the black backed gulls get upset if you are too close to their babies!
Later that afternoon we meet up near the wharves to prepare for our underwater clean up.
The visibility was better than we expected close to shore but with 1000’s of salps it was like swimming in a thick soup. We checked out the sunken barge before heading out to look for rubbish.
What we found was 100’s of nudibranchs – I had never seen anything like it. Imagine a hill with a flock of sheep – everywhere we looked there were more nudibranchs!
The good news was we didn’t find a large amount of rubbish (if you ignore the tyres) and not a lot of modern debris.
After all our hard work we were pleased to return home for a feast of epic proportions!
Plenty of energy to fuel our night explorations as we headed out for a tuatara hunt!
After a lazy Sunday morning sleep in we headed along the beach to clean up any wind driven debris and collected a rubbish bag of mostly plastics and food wrappers.
& would we do it all over again? You bet – bring on Matiu-Somes 2018!
