Catching Up...Again

Hello all. I thought I would take the opportunity to catch up on a few miscellaneous things I have done over the last two weeks. First of all I have finally nailed down my project, and I will be working on restoring mussel bed habitat and looking at factors affecting recruitment into these new beds. In a nut shell, what aspects of the bed promote juvenile mussels to join the party. I will elaborate more on this as I go. I found another place to visit, but due to the late time of day I arrived, a few landscape shots were all I got. It is off of Snells beach, near Kawau Island where I will likely be doing some of my work. Here a few shots of the landscape that definitely encourage me to return and explore. I also past a deer farm, and had to stop myself from staring so I did not get into an accident!

I also went for my first New Zealand dive. After a frustrating 20 minutes fussing with a ridiculous set of straps, Richard and I were in the water and off. I wish he had told me before we set off, just how much swimming he intended. I managed however, and we did get to see a few interesting thing, including a large number of fish, sponges, kelp, and a few invertebrates. Please excuse the quality of these pictures, there current in the area was a bit strong and I didn't fuss too much with checking the pictures as I tried to keep up with my dive buddy who was hoping to find some Lobsters.

There were tons of these little fish everywhere, although I have not had a chance to ID them. Some, such as this little guy, were quite cryptic. This made it difficult to get a great shot, but at least he sat still long enough to try!

This was the only nudibranch I saw, but what amazing colour. The picture again was not great but I had to get some sort of record of him.

Most of the bottom was either bedrock escarpments or sandy bottom in Mathesons Bay. Rocky areas were dominated by encrusting and coralline algae like the pictures before as well as this large kelp species, creating a forest that we had to swim through frequently.

Before I found out I was carrying insufficient lead, Richard fed a few of the fish, including this trigger fish who asserted itself around the food, while other fish just watched for hopeful scraps.

The weather here is amazing, sunny one minute, rain the next. The only consistency seems to be weather the weather is strong or mild. The strong days so far have been filled with rain, so it has been hard to really give you a glimpse of what it is like in a strong wind. Last week however, we did have some strong winds that eventually blew the rain away, leaving the landscape soaked with wisps of moisture floating off of every surface and the ocean churned and spraying. I'll leave you with one of the shots I took of that day!