Welcome to Total Bottom Time!

Total Bottom Time is my online personal dive log. A place where I can share my dives with friends, family, other divers, and the world. You can find out a bit more about me and see my full log of dives by clicking on my profile on the right. Feel free to subscribe to my dives via email or RSS.

Below are just some of my latest dives.

On the second dive of the morning we didn't find quite as many crayfish but our catch rate was higher. I only missed a couple and caught 3 crayfish and 2 crab. My mate caught 1 crayfish. 2 of my crayfish had to go back so we can away with a total of 3 crayfish and 3 crab for the day. Not a lot but enough to nicely complement a meal.

Because of the timing of the catch we weren't able to eat them right away. Instead they were boiled before being frozen. Apparently you can't freeze them first and then boil them later.

We wound up bringing them all out for a New Year's Eve Cray and Crab feast! This time we prepared the crayfish on a hibachi.

Crayfish on the Hibachi

The crab were steamed in a frying pan.

Steamed Crab

Happy New Year and good riddance to 2020!

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I decided to kick off the holidays with a crayfish catch. The weather wasn't great and the ocean was a bit rough. We weren't able to get out to Thoms Rock so we went to a spot much closer to land and more sheltered from Cook Strait.

Shark's Tooth is just south of Taputeranaga Island and significantly shallower than Thoms Rock. The ocean floor at the site is covered in seaweed for the most part. That definitely made the hunt more challenging and you typically couldn't just peer around and find crayfish. You had to wave the seaweed out of the wave which would occasionally alert the crayfish to your presence.

After a number of misses, I finally snagged a couple of crayfish and a crab. One of the crayfish had to go back and I was left with 1 crayfish and 1 crab.

Shark's Tooth

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A bit of a swell on the south coast of Wellington so we had to dive in the more sheltered Island Bay Snorkel Trail, a short drive from Dive Wellington.

As usual, we encountered some blue cod. These seemed to me to be a bit bolder than the ones in Mermaid's Kitchen. I always want liken the blue cod around here to a dog or cat or something familiar. But they’re really not. They really have their own personality.

Blue cod bite

Being in the marine reserve, the snorkel trail never disappoints for the number and size of crayfish.

Crayfish

There were some interesting egg sacks too. The first picture is definitely squid eggs. 

I'm not sure what kind of egg sacks are in these next pictures. I'm not even really sure they are egg sacks. I suspect they are from their look and that they're attached to kelp.

Egg Sacks?

If you happen to know what they are, please comment!

[Update: Turns out they're not eggs at all but wandering anenome!]

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