Our final dive of the trip to Kaikōura was a shore dive to a site called the Maze. The rocks on the far right in the pics below make up the underwater maze.

The Maze

I was navigating for this dive so my job was to keep us out of the maze by going in a straight line and keeping the rocks of the maze on our right. We swam out to the edge of the rocks, deployed a surface marker buoy (SMB), and descended. Nearby I built a rock formation that I hoped to find at the end of our dive. I never saw these rocks again.

Rock Formation

I was spending most of my time looking at my compass but as I was looking down at it, I noticed something on the ocean floor a metre or two down that didn't quite seem to be a rock but maybe it was. I descended a bit and gave it a poke. It turned out to be a stargazer. I'd never actually encountered one of these before.

Stargazer

I did manage to get shots of a few things along the way.

Snail

Blue Cod

Destroyed Container

We did a one-hundred-eighty-degree turn and started heading back. On the way back, one of the other divers found this octopus that must have been feeding on something under its arms. It was very intent on its meal and never really moved from that spot.

Feeding Octopus

My navigation was just a bit off and, at our turnaround point, we veered into the maze. It's aptly named. We had to twist and turn around the rocks and kelp as we made our way back.

We eventually surfaced when we thought we were somewhere near our starting point. We weren't so far off but I did need to do a surface swim to pick up the SMB before heading back to shore.

Location: Kaikoura, South Island, Canterbury, New Zealand

Dive Number:   252 Bottom Time: 1h 11m Time In: 9:50 a.m. Tank In: 208 PSI Max Depth: 8.80 ft Table Used:

Mix:   Air Safety Stop: 3m Time Out: 11:02 a.m. Tank Out: 74 PSI Average Depth: 6.30 ft Start Pressure Group:

Surface Interval:   End Pressure Group:

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