As you all know by now my wife and I moved to New Zealand a few years ago and for the first six months lived in an apartment in Wellington until we had decided where we would like to build a house. We eventually decided to move up to the Kapiti Coast which is about 70 kms from the city and bought a section of land almost on the beach. During the course of the building work I met a lot of the tradesmen, one of them Gaza who was a carpenter shared an interest in fishing but was also a keen diver. In NZ both snorkeling and diving are a popular past-time and a lot of guys have their own boats. In front of our place about 5 kms out is Kapiti Island, which is not only a well known bird sanctuary but also an excellent possie {pronounced pozzy} for boat fishing....Dave and I get out there as often as possible, especially in the summer when the trout fishing drops off a little. Any way we had been out there fishing for Blue Cod and half way through the session Dave was convinced he had seen a pretty big dorsal fin break the surface about 50 meters from the boat....luckily I hadn't seen it myself....because I'm not a great lover of sharks....especially the toothy kind when they are big enough to bite back and although we never saw sight of the thing again I was glad when we arrived back at the beach with all my arms and legs still attached a couple of hours later.
The very next day Gaza was out in his 15 ft tinny {aluminum boat} with a couple of his diving buddies and were anchored in the same area... spear-fishing and diving for paua...a sort of abalone which is bloody delicious. They'd had a couple of dives each and Gaza was just about to go down again for his last dive of the day when one of them spotted a large dark shadow cruising about 10 meters from the boat....now Gaza is also a keen photographer....so what do they do next....get this....they lower Gaza head-first over the side...holding him by his feet into the water armed only with his camera !
The pics below were taken by him...it circled the boat for over an hour, often swimming close enough for them to touch it and was estimated to be between twelve and sixteen feet long.

Post edited by: Codstomper, at: 2008/08/19 11:35

The pics made the local press and New Zealand television.

Post edited by: Codstomper, at: 2008/08/18 19:29

The Fish !

Post edited by: Codstomper, at: 2008/08/18 17:29

Last one

Looking back to where we live...on the way out to Kapiti Island.

Post edited by: Codstomper, at: 2008/08/18 19:32