What lives under that Wharf?

By Steve Hathaway

Like lots of you, my first experience of fishing (and for hundreds of hours after that) was off a wharf catching sprats in a bait-catcher. Later, I progressed to fishing with a rod, once my folks were convinced I was not going to drop it into the drink. Something that made a huge impression on me as a kid was stopping at Mangonui Harbour for the first time on a bleak winter’s evening. The wharf had a lone fisherman braving the elements, and he had just caught a little spotty. Then, after quickly passing a hook through its back, he threw it in as a live bait. I had never seen this done before and was intrigued. But what made more of an impression on me was seeing my first john dory hauled in a couple of minutes later!

This experience lifted my interest in harbours and wharves exponentially, and ever since I find it hard to drive past a wharf without checking out what is being caught at the time. Watching from a wharf as schools of baitfish sit just below the surface can be an incredible sight, especially when a kingie races through, throwing the bait into panic mode. But as cool as this is, I prefer to get in the water and have a look. This gives an entirely different perspective and can present some quite staggering sights. There is far more to see than huge schools of fish, and more life present than I had ever imagined.

With this in mind, you can understand I was pretty excited when I got a call about doing some underwater filming for the Port of Tauranga, documenting marine life in the harbour and around their wharves. Sure, this doesn’t sound like a glamorous job, especially because the harbour clarity was still recovering after a record 12-hour rainfall; it’s much easier to make things look amazing when filming in clear water, so this was going to be a fun challenge. And besides, I was convinced I was going to find some incredible life in one of New Zealand’s busiest shipping ports.

Something else that made this extra interesting is that all the port’s wharves are out of bounds to fishermen and divers, so here was an opportunity to scuba dive where very few ever get to dive, in what is effectively a marine reserve. On arrival, I found I was diving from one of the pilot boats with a very experienced crew, who knew this harbour better than the backs of their hands. I think they found my enthusiasm pretty humorous when I made it known that I had been bouncing out of my skin looking forward to this dive for weeks. They do this sort of thing every day!

Our first stop was to quickly film the extent of the pipi beds. I was thinking how do you make a pipi look cool on video? But once I realised how huge these beds were, I was not surprised to see lots of rays feeding on them. I have an interest in the health of pipi beds in harbours for a few reasons. These marine organisms not only help to filter and clean the water if harbours have healthy stocks of them; I am also involved in filming New Zealand’s apex predator, which loves coming into harbours hunting the stingrays that eat the pipis – orca! (I have been filming orca underwater for Ingrid Visser, NZ’s orca researcher, for the last few years, documenting orca behaviour around our coast, where they seem to spend a lot of time in harbours.

So it’s not surprising how often orca frequent this harbour, chasing what Ingrid calls ‘orca candy’ (stingrays), as there are plenty of them! Once we had finished on the pipi beds, we headed straight for the wharfs. My brief was to film what I saw, showing what lived in and amongst the piles and boulders. Harbours and wharf structures can have a huge variety of life living on them, and they also act like the crèches of the ocean, providing certain species of young fish with food and protection.

They can have large schools of bait hanging around them too, with the accompanying predators never too far away. I had also heard reports of thousands of small crayfish living in and around these structures at certain times of the year, so this dive was going to be fun. As we hit the bottom at 12m, the visibility was only about three metres, but despite this, a school of terrorised baitfish frantically rushed past almost immediately – a definite sign that predators were close behind.

Sure enough, out of the gloom a school of nice kingies up to about 12 kilos cruised past. They ended up turning around and hanging with us for a minute or so, inquisitively checking us out and seemingly enthralled by our bubbles. The large group of fishermen on the Mount public wharf, not too far away, would not believe their eyes if they had seen this! The harbour also has john dory written all over it to me, with large schools of baitfish gathering at most structures. However, although I kept my eyes out for one of these kings of camouflage, with visibility so poor, these fish – which rely on stealth and ambush to catch their prey – were impossible to see.



But as soon as I looked back into the boulders at the base of the wharf, I saw a large nest of small crayfish. None would have been legal, but they were very cool to see, and as I turned the camera around, there were crays all around under the rocks up to about 4m away and up on top of rocks sitting in the open. My lights were on full beam now, as light dissipates very quickly underwater, especially in bad vis, and without lights even the most vivid of colours underwater fade into monochrome. Turn on the lights though, and this changes remarkably. This was illustrated by shining the lights on the piles, which I knew would be covered with plenty of sponges, anemones and other life. One thing that always amazes me is how stunning their colours are underwater. Indeed, despite seeing loads of crays and large kingies, the highlight for me was looking at this variety of colour and beauty.

During another of our dives, I couldn’t believe my luck when a very large butterfish came up and posed for the camera. I thought this was pretty weird, as I’ve never had one come this close while filming before – especially while blowing bubbles. Then, just as I was thinking it was due to some legendary skill I had acquired from my many years of spearfishing, all was revealed as it moved closer to my camera lens – it had a milky eye and was actually blind on that side. So much for my exceptional skill – I had a good laugh to myself and carried on filming, before this fish finally figured out I was there and raced off into the gloom.

I’ve had some great dives this year, but without a doubt this one was right up there. So if thinking about having a dive at a wharf or in a harbour, make sure you use a torch so you can see all the amazing colours. But first, find out if you are actually allowed to dive there, as large fines can be dished out if you go into a restricted area. Also, wharves can be exceptionally dangerous places to dive, with large numbers of boats around. So use a diver’s flag, but rely on common sense too, as there are plenty of people who don’t seem to know what a diver’s flag is.

Courtesy of New Zealand Fishing News April 2011
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