ninety feet under water.

poor knights island, new zealand.

scuba diving is like meditation. no one can talk, you can't hear a thing and all you can do is enjoy your surroundings while swimming around. there is something so serene about hearing nothing except for your rhythmic and soothing breathing. it can be interrupted by the occasional humpback whale passing through. the time i have spent diving, 477 minutes to be exact, have been the most enjoyable moments of my life.

my most enjoyable dive to date was my second dive at poor knights island on november 15th, 2006. we went through the blue maomao archway. not surprisingly my partner was terynn, and i believe we held hands the entire time. we also stayed at the back of the pack, no fins in the face makes a much more enjoyable experience. lucky we have to keep a log of all of our dives so i am able to recall this dive in detail. i have about an entire page written for this one. underlined and in big letters is FAVORITE DIVE TO DATE!! still is.

rach, julie, me, terynn, sara and allison read to take off



arriving at poor knights island

the reason this arch is called the blue maomao archway is because literally from top to bottom there were blue maomaos and demoiselles. i know these fish are "pretty boring" being all silver but thousands upon thousands are breath taking. other noted sea creatures were two grey moray eels, black angle fish, scorpion fish, leather jacket turtle, sand diggers, wrasses, nudibranchs and two sting rays (let me add one was HUGE, i swear about 7 feet across).

professional photo of the archway

Grey Moray Eel and Scorpion Fish


I LOVE NUDIBRANCHS!!!!

we started the dive by swimming across this trench area, pretty shallow with a strong current, we eventually arrived at the archway. once we were there we basically had as much time as we wanted to make our way through the arch. terynn and i of course took our sweet time going through the arch. we held hands and put them out like superman and glided through the schools of fish, which would barely part before reaching our finger tips. it was amazing. we explored the walls and every corner and crack we could and saw a million nudibranchs (probably my favorite slug in the world), found an amazing scorpion fish hiding out in a little cave and spotted two eels peeking out at us. we spent a total of 40 minutes under the water that day, which was until then was the most time i had spent under water.

post dive, about to hosed with warm water...

ultimately i can't describe that dive without you being there. everything that day came together. regardless of the fact i smashed my finger in the RV door on the way to the dive shop and a silly sheep woke us up at all hours of the morning, while attempting to sleep for our first night in the RV. the professionalism of the dive company, dive tutukaka, the amazing hour boat ride to the island, our kick ass dive leader, who turned out to be from somewhere in the midwest, the awesome lunches and milo we feasted on between dives, the tour of the island, and of course the diving.

leaving poor knights island, headed for tutukaka, new zealand

right now i am in need of a dive so bad it hurts. i wish i were ninety feet underwater where i only have my thoughts and my breathing and of course another world.