Home / 2. Trip Reports /3. New Zealand Dive Sites /Photography / "Silent Diving" by Mark Ballett
Easter Weekend at the Poor Knights diving with Yukon Charters and Noel, Pauly and Jo.
Diving: Pete, Mike, Skip, Andrew, Anna, John, Jane, Jonathan, Deirdre, Greg, Phil, Marty and me.
I watched a lone diver in crystal clear water carrying what seemed to be a Kalashnikov machine gun.
He looked up towards the surface and calmly took aim.
Pink Mao Mao at Northern Arch / Ian Skipworth
You can see that it is shallow, perhaps just a few metres, and you can also see the distorted image of a large white yacht and party guests dressed in fine clothes. Marty is of course amongst the guests at the party.
The diver shoots a pretty young woman in a white dress before making his escape. Blood oozes from her shoulder and she collapses onto the deck: the machine gun seemingly having fired a poison dart.
It’s on film, I saw it with my own eyes so it must be true, the owner of Silent Diving, Mike Fowler, did this not so long ago now and he then came straight to New Zealand to join us for the weekend, thankfully without the gun.
What were his real motives for being here? Diving, or hiding from the Miami police department?
The trip was organised by Pete Mesley who had arranged for Mike to come over from Canada for a TDI rebreather trimix course (Mod 2&3). John, Jonathan and Andrew were the students and Pete was being accessed by Mike for his certification to teach the course. The rest of us had come along to keep them company and to enjoy the diving.
Mike chose a rebreather because, of course, the unsuspecting party guest wouldn’t have been able to see, or hear, his approach but as he made his escape he rather incredibly got caught in a very obvious net, in very good visibility and had to discard his expensive rebreather to make a free ascent to the surface from 7m. Can you guess how the police began to suspect it was him, apart from the fact that his company name was emblazoned on the yellow box?
So many breathers were something of a novelty on the Tutukaka pier and several people enquired about them. I worked out that in total we had about $200k of kit on board, if you added up the breathers, the cameras and the computers, including Mike’s X1 which is really neat and a must have toy for the boys – you just tap it three times to change menus and then up or down to move through the menus and on the side to select.
It does much the same as a VR3 but it is only about a third of the size, although it costs about the same.
The cameras on board alone must have been worth $30k or so. I only dive open circuit but I am very tempted to buy a breather, particularly after this weekend, but I have concluded that once you have one you have such long bottom times that you then need to buy a camera, or else you won’t know what to do down there! Silent diving allows you to get that little bit closer to the subject, or target, as Mike demonstrated so well.
Sugarloaf at 60m / Ian Skipworth
I am a visitor to New Zealand and so haven’t dived the sites before so I was lucky enough to have Pauly guide me for which I am very grateful.
We were lucky with the weather so were able to get to Sugarloaf, which we dived twice and the G Spot where the course did their final 70m dive in near perfect conditions, with crystal clear water and a flat calm sea. We also dove (I love that word!) Northern Arch twice, The Canyon, Southern Arch, Cream Garden, and Serpent Rock.
With a breather you seem to become less obtrusive underwater.
Pauly and I were doing a safely stop at 5 metres at Sugar Loaf and we watched a large Mako shark glide past Deirdre and Jane ten metres or so below us without even noticing them, fortunately perhaps. It could have been the same one that Pete saw breach the surface rather spectacularly whilst we were underwater.
Splendid Perch at 12 Fathom Reef / Ian Skipworth
The visibility was good, at times very good, and for me the rays and snapper and clouds of now familiar fish were lovely to see with an occasional splendid perch thrown in.
Deco stop at 12 Fathom - amazing visibility / Ian Skipworth
The TDI course did progressively deeper dives to 40, 50, 60 ad 70 metres and on the deeper dives they saw quite a few splendid perch and black coral as well. Fortunately Skip was on hand for the deeper dives and we are lucky to be able to see his photographs in this trip report.
For me après diving is as enjoyable as the diving itself and drinks in the Game Fishing Club with 80kg marlin being lifted ashore and weighed behind us was really neat. I thought they were huge but then went into the Club to see the head of the NZ record at 450kg or so and realised they were just babies and arguably should have been released. It all seemed very New Zealand to me.
My ambition is to be a member so that I can get a glass with a white tag on it: one day perhaps.
Rachel joined us on the last night with a pre-publication copy of Richie Kohler’s new book about the Titanic where Mike gets a mention from his last Britannic trip.
Because of the drills being done on the course and the need for open circuit bailouts there was a lot of gas mixing to do each evening and I helped Pete outside Noel and Jo’s home. It was for me one of the most memorable parts of the trip. We had some wine, but no glasses, so in the end found an old Hellmanns mayonnaise jar in the garage and Pete and I shared it whilst I filled the O2 and Pete worked the Heath Robinson blending station he had constructed from a compressor, some G’s of O2 and Helium and lots of tubing and a black plastic bag that he filled just like a resuscitation bag, keeping Frankenstein alive.
I have a very limited amount of experience of blending Nitrox and I have no idea how he got the mixes he did with the equipment he had. It was nothing less than genius.
12 Fathom Reef / Ian Skipworth
Monday was our last day diving and the sea was unusually calm.
On the way home we met a pod of common dolphins who decided to play with us for a while. At one time kneeling on the bow of the boat I was looking down on 12 dolphins swimming side by side under the bow, no more than three feet away, sliding over each other and jumping clear of the water from time to time. The clear smooth water making it easy to see them looking up at us: it was lovely.
On two nights we were entertained by Jo and Noel at their house.
Jo is a legendary cook and they are both lovely hosts. Outside on the wooden deck I could have stayed there dancing all night but I wasn’t doing a course the next day. The wood stove burning in the corner, helped along by both O2 and petrol, and the dog barking at the flames with the cat purring around our feet.
Everyone passed and had a great weekend.
Mike showed us the clip from CSI Miami with him in it shooting the poor young woman. It’s from series three and will be out soon in the US. He also told us how they traced him down in the end but I’m afraid I am not able to reveal the secret until the episode is screened.
A great weekend and a very interesting one. Now where can I buy a rebreather?
Pete, Noel, Jo, Pauly, and my fellow divers, thanks a lot; I am a very lucky tourist.
Divers at 70m / Ian Skipworth
