By Pete Mesley

New Zealand has some of the most native and untouched submarine country sides that most divers never witness and enjoy. I think it is too easy to take for granted what you have on your front door. Personally the Alderman Islands hold a special place in my heart for diving. Here I will sharing with you not only the aquatic wonders I have come across but also the local people, charter operators and dive store owners that make diving these sites all the more fun!

Diving the Alderman Islands has always given me the goosies! Since I have been in NZ – over 10 years now, I have probably done the most of my diving in, around, in-between, beside and through The Alderman Islands!!

First of all, where exactly are the Aldees?? We head out from Tairua – (Gateway to the Coromandel) roughly 1.5 hours south of Auckland.  The Eastern Coromandel is also a labyrinth of nooks and crannies, bombies, pins and crayfish supermarkets!! But that’s digressing a bit!! Out of Tairua and approximately 14km’s due East off the coast you will encounter the mighty Alderman’s. On the journey out you will pass slightly south of Shoe Island and through the “Gateway” to the Alderman’s. The “Posts” of this gateway are Big King and Little King rocks which  are also rich with aquatic life. On the way out you can immediately see how special these islands are. The sky can be dark with gargantuan cumulous nimbus clouds threatening the seaside settlements with the wrath of one hell of a good down poor but still the sun always shines on these islands so far out to sea.

It was on the MV Taranui that I first experienced the Aldermans on. With Jim Hope – questionably  one of Coromandel’s most experienced skippers (and undoubtedly the best crack!!)  he started me on my journey of discovery of these truly amazing groups of Islands.

I can still see Jims face and his looks of disbelief every time we would surface after a dive and not have our catch bags overflowing with crays!! (I would learn that it was Kiwi custom for a skipper and their boat to be gauged on the spots you would be put on and the amount of crays that were caught!!) But when we would gather on the deck and spend the next few hours deep in dialog trying to find out all the new critters and encounters we had just witnessed, Jim would relax knowing that we had another awesome dive on his boat (Crays or no crays!!). Once Jim had got over the horror of actually not putting people on the right spot – he had!!, there were crays for Africa! He soon succumbed to the fact that he too loved to just watch the aquatic life just going about its business ( but If we told anyone he would certainly lose that “Killing” street cred with his other loyal hunter-gatherer customers!) Jim, soon picking up what we were after, took us to spots that truly made you feel humble.

One of my most favourite spots is what we call “Aladins Cave” situated on the Northern point of Flat Island. I am not a religious person but I truly felt close to the almighty here. From the outskirts it doesn’t look much. Not very deep at about 9 meters there is a wide opening into a cave that goes deep into the island. Now normally caves & caverns are a definite no no unless you have the right training and gear but this place is unique. At all times you have direct ascent to the surface which makes this dive safe for all types of diver, even beginners. On the way into the cavern it looks like you are heading into the belly of some giant whale. It is pretty dark for a few seconds but then when you look right there is a huge arch way leading into the next bay. Being best time to dive this spot is the afternoon, when the sun streams into this side of the island – a perfect second dive!! The clarity and blueness of the water really is astounding ( the Poor Knights Islands are almost as good!!) So when you have a mixture of Gin clear Cobolt blue water with the sun streaming through the arch ways of “Aladins cave” the result is one hell of a spoilt diver!!

“Aladins Cave”? Ohhh you inquire about the name hah? During one of our many surface intervals, in the early days, a friend of mine and I decided to do some exploration. Armed with a mask, fins snorkel and torch we headed right into the gutts of the cave. About 20 meters in where it looked to meet a dead end we found it didn’t! The cave extended another 20 odd meters into the island. On reaching the end we could actually get out of the water and walk up a little rock beach. On closer attention we found amazing rock formations above our heads. It looked like an upside down staircase leading into the island. Back in the water now there is a big overhang, so one big breath, a duck dive and HELLO!! Crayfishville!!! There were literally hundreds of them “sea weazles” snoring away having the sleep of their life ( well not for much longer anyway) Once word got out the secret was out and the rest is history – “Aladins Cave” was born!! Just for the record we left the place intact (kind of!!)

Back to the archway (that last story was a little anecdote for those burglars amongst us!) the story is certainly not over. Once out in the open again there are numerous fish nurseries with juvenile snapper, demoselles, maumau, and other blue and black thingies!! Just outside of Aladins Cave area about 50 meters off the island there is a pin that drops off to about 22 meters. This dive is also amazing (make sure you take a stick as you will have to be beating the nudibranches off with it) On one dive I counted about 7 different species, soft corals, gorgonians and hundreds of dual anemones littering the rocks!!

Hammerhead spotted off Shark Alley

Tairua is serviced by a dive store just under Paku Hill. Tairua Dive & Fishinnnn, owned by “Ozzi” Dave Early and his wife Donna is the heart of all operations in Tairua. If you are wanting to head out anywhere out of Taurua Dave and Donna are only too happy to point you in the right direction. Their fully functional dive store does everything from training to tank fills ( even sort out your empty tummy with the infamous Tairua pies. I have to say that I have not spent one day in Tairua without having a pie – Minted lamb gets me drooling!!

Tairua has also played host to many of my specialist diving jaunts.  The best part of being a scuba diver is that feeling of being a pioneer, an explorer, an adventurer. You don’t have to that experienced to be an explorer. There are countless dive sites littering NZ coastlines, just waiting for some enthusiastic divers to come and lay claim (that’s visual claim!!) to them. It is this idea that drives me to put on my diving gear and head out on the weekend.

I have had the pleasure to go out exploring many times with operators like Jim Hope of Taranui, Brian Schmidt of Tairua Dive, Pete Grennell and Dave of Silverwing charters out of Tairua. There is a group of us mad keen divers whose life motto is to Boldly go forth and dive as many new dive sites (and revisit them) as possible. Feeding this habit takes some doing!! Brian Schmidt has on many occasions taken us out to sites that are out of the reaches of most divers. With all the right gear (and tons of it!!), training, teamwork, and planning we executed many dives around the Alderman area and Tairua region.

One place that springs to mind is a site about 6nm due East of the Northern most tip of Slipper Island. This site took us the best part of an hour to find but worth it or what!!! A rise off the shale bottom from 60 meters coming up in all areas to about 41m. A blessed anomaly which has sat patiently for an eternity waiting to be discovered. This place not named yet brought another feeling of grandeur. Mike Z and I were the only members on this covert midweeker dive. The dive was planned for a max depth of 55 meters. Spending a bottom time of 25 minutes at this depth would give us about 35 minutes of deco. A small price to pay for the dive. On descent the viz was about 2 meters. The water was full of plankton and algie but at about 28 meters the viz opened out to over 25 meters. We hit the top of the reef at about 43 meters to be met by at least 100 giant king fish. It really is a spectacular sight. Kingis (I think) have more personality than Barracuda have. They are very inquisitive and come in really close. Well that is a small taste of what the Coromandel has to offer.

Tairua really is the heart of the Coromandel! I cant wait till the next trip!

© Dive T.E.C.
Email: info@petemesley.com