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.

The visibility was decent and the weather nice enough to go around the block and dive from one end of the trail to the other at the Island Bay Snorkel Trail. This time I was buddied with someone with a rebreather so that was a first for me. Some of the buddy checks and safety procedures are different. Plus there are no bubbles to see when looking around for your buddy underwater!

Blue Moki

Blue Cod

Crayfish

Blue Moki and Scarlet Wrasse

Rebreather

I use iNaturalist NZ for fish identification and the findings for the day are at Observations on 2025-03-22.

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The swell was a bit much for Houghton Bay so we were off to the Island Bay Snorkel Trail. During the dive briefing we were treated to a large pod of dolphins cruising 500m off the coast. They made it a bit hard to focus on the briefing but eventually the dolphins passed and we decided to go around the block and dive from one end of the trail to the other.

Brooding Anemone

Blue Moki

Variable Nudibranch

Wandering Anemone

Genus Epiactis (Anemone)

Crystal Jellyfish

I use iNaturalist NZ for fish identification and the findings for the day are at Observations on 2025-03-22.

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For the second dive of the day, I was buddied up with a couple of less experienced divers. I led the dive and the plan was to dive off Princess Beach into Houghton Bay and that we would turn back when running low on air. We wound up turning back sooner than later. 😁

Along the way we did get to see the usual suspects and one not-so-usual suspect.

Variable Triplefin

Crayfish

Grey Massive Sponge

Genus Polymastia

Banded Morwong

Scarlet Wrasse

Cook's Turban

The one slightly rarer sighting was this Green-boned Butterfish. Personally I can't recall seeing one before but I probably have and just didn't know what I was looking at. It was very reactive and bolted as soon as I got within sight of it.

Green-boned Butterfish

On club dives, you sometimes get buddied with less experienced divers and that's cool. Everyone needs to learn. However, I don't feel so bad about my own air consumption now. 🙂

I've taken to using iNaturalist NZ for fish identification and the findings for the day are at Observations on 2025-02-15.

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