SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY AT THE POOR KNIGHTS

22
Apr

The highlight of it all was that scene off Serpent Rock when we saw snapper leaping and thrashing about in a most unsnapperly manner. Skipper ["Excuse me. Are you the Kapiten?" asked a small, superbly mannered European lad] Craig Johnson took us over to investigate.
by Wade Doak

Two Perfect Day crew leapt into the fray with digital cameras while many more on board snapped away as we watched the fracas with fleeing pelagic puffers and the huge snapper ganging up on them.  It was all so very visible from the upper deck.  From those in the water we learnt there were also kingies, big trevally and even demoiselles and blue maomao all around those poor little Aussie puffers-definitely not a species that could acclimatise to the Poor Knights!  I recall crewman Ben Saul’s excellent photo from 30 March last, aboard Bright Arrow, when the same puffers arrived, but do not recall any reports of an assault on them by snapper at that time.

Jan has pictures of the puffer attack: a tight huddle of about fifty puffers on the surface with at least eight big snapper converging around them.  Some snapper leapt completely from the water.  There would have been so much more happening below.  While the snapper were lashing the water to foam, pink tails and fins appearing; multiple ones tearing at the same preyfish; for some reason the kingfish all remained below.  A few lucky puffers may have escaped.  I saw a frantic pair fleeing towards our hull over the surface.  I have never before seen snapper behaving like this.  It could not have happened in earlier days at the Poor Knights because huge snapper were never in abundant evidence as they are now around Serpent Rock – and virtually everywhere else at the Knights these days.

As all species of puffers have a deadly-to-humans toxin in their skin and internal organs, I would wonder if snapper from the Knights are not now dangerous to eat… I certainly would not experiment on myself!

My Australian fish book ‘Coastal Fishes of South East Australia’ by Rudi Kuiter, calls them ‘mainstay puffers’; Arothron firmamentum [up to 43 cm in size]; not as in previous reports, starry puffers, which are a different species: Arothron stellatus.  The starry puffers are reef fish, abundant in NSW and grow to 1 metre.

Earlier Jan saw a big snapper predating on a kina beneath weed by El Torito Cave and a kingfish being attended to by a mado.  Nearby I saw a huge, plump bluefish cruising about; I have never seen a bigger one.  There were speedy blue knifefish in near the cliffs.  The reef fish showed no negative response to the melee of humans overhead.  Six kingies hovered permanently below Perfect Day; its broad bottom provides ideal cover for predation.

This was the culmination of an incredibly enjoyable trip on Perfect Day with all our extended family out there on my seventieth birthday.  With this superb weather everything was at its best; water temperature, a balmy 21 degrees.  I would love to rave about so many aspects; from the immaculate comportment of both boat and crew; the amazingly happy atmosphere on board, faultless with a peak load of 75; - my pro-skipper son Brady was loud in his praises of the vessel and the crew: ” a truly well-run operation,” he concluded.

We all feel so proud to see New Zealanders running a complex operation like this so smoothly, with such pleasant, affable manners, totally professional, yet relaxed and warm.  They create a special atmosphere on board the vessel that I have never experienced anywhere in the world in my diving travels.  Somehow they manage to convey all aspects of safety and oversee that everything is in control without being in the least uptight and regimented.  It is hard to convey the level of their achievement in words, but I am sure those on board would acknowledge what I am trying to explain.

On arrival near Trevor’s Rocks in Maroro Bay 65 people of all ages and many nationalities leapt over, with no confusion from lack of space.  Many were on repeat trips with Perfect Day.  One lady said: “We always bring our overseas visitors out here.”  And I reflected: that is how it should be, with such an outstanding destination as the Poor Knights has become, with its fully protected, teeming community of fishes, and the calls of rainforest bellbirds cascading down the cliffs.  Skipper Craig told us a visiting scientist on the islands recently measured a tuatara that was 70 cm long!  This is one bit of the world we have gotten right.

As I cut my birthday cake last night with all our fresh-from-the-Poor Knights team around the table, and was urged to make a wish, I said that I had nothing more to wish for than to dive at the PK with my grandkids on my seventieth.  And for that I am so grateful to all those Dive Tutukaka folk.  As I climbed aboard and lovely crew girl Sophie kindly picked up my weightbelt, I remarked that it would be the first time in my diving life, some 56 years, that had happened!

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