Diving on the Queens Birthday

Guys and Gals!
This weekend was a very special weekend here in NZ. Here in NZ they "celebrate" the Queen's Bday by giving everyone a day off on Monday, leaving plenty of time for people to go away for a long weekend. This weekend was fantastic. On Friday I got up, packed my gear, and waited until my car ride came to pick me up. At 3pm we headed out of the city to the Coromandel for a weekend of diving. After arriving in this small town a few hours later, we grabbed some food and headed to the "bach" (a NZ term for summer home). This home was perfect. Everything on the walls was diving/fish related. The house also had a separate mini house with 3 beds and the garage also had 4 beds in it, a perfect place for a giant sleepover with friends who love to go diving. There was a sweet fish cleaning hut too.

Friday night we watched a spearfishing dvd and talked for a few hours. We woke up at 8am Saturday and headed out for a day of diving. The boat we had was a piece of work. After finally getting it started we got out to the dive spot and hopped in. I shot some butterfish while the other guys looked for crawfish. We moved onto another spot which was know for being the sharkyist spot around. Too bad the water was too cold for there to be any around. Here I shot two John Dory. One fell off the stringer somehow. Maybe a shark ate it... We got picked up after spending about 2 hours there and went over to another spot, not very fishy there. It was late and the sun was going down, so we headed in. There was a rainbow on the horizon. A nice finish to a days dive. That night we took it easy, we had the competition the next morning.

Sunday was amazing, although I didn't get a partner for the competition and didn't know what half the fish looked like that I could shoot, I had a good time. The weather was perfect and the divers, 23 pairs, said that this was one of the best places to dive. My main objective for the day was to shoot a kingfish, but even the best divers there weren't seeing any. Since it's getting into winter most of the bigger fish are heading further out to sea. I saw some eels, large schools of fish, and almost had a stingray take one of my fish away from me. As soon as I shot the fish, the stingray would come out of nowhere and try to grab it off my spear. It was cool to watch. A few hours later after looking for the 4 fish (out of the 20 on the list) that I knew I could shoot, I ended up with 2 butterfish and two other fish that a diver threw back into the water... not what I wanted, but then again, when none of the Kiwis want to be your partner, what else can you do. The comp ended at 3pm and the weigh-in was at 5pm. All the fish shot went to be auctioned off to raise money for the Lions Club. I kept mine, a student has to eat more than just pasta sometimes. There was a nice dinner that evening at 6:30. All the divers got together for the prize ceremony and I won $80 to a dive shop from a drawing they had. I had a great nights sleep.

Monday was gorgeous and we couldn't leave without some crawfish, so we went diving for a few hours after cleaning up the house. The crawfish are like lobster, except they don't have claws. They are also really good to eat... I mean really good! I got home around 5pm and met up with some of my friends. We had the crawfish I named Herbert. It was the end to a sweet-as weekend.

Here is the link to see more photos from that weekend: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2055835&l=f2d0d&id=34506567