The forecast for the weekend was looking pretty good - a bit of swell from the NorthEast was lingering but we were hopeful of some great diving. We headed over to the East side as the breeze was making the West side a bit lumpy. The swell was there, but only about half a metre, so we anchored over Phil's Pins. The top comes up to about 16m, but falls away steeply. Plenty of fish, a few Stingrays and some Kingys made the current almost irrelevant. With the breeze still making things awkward on the western side we headed to Fraggle Rock for the next dive. Mel and Jamie tested out their new Halcyon Scooters - going back and forth with the divers to the deep swim-through and generally scooting around like kids with new toys!! We settled into Rikoriko for dinner and the evening.

Next morning the breeze had all but gone, so we made our way to Taravana Cave. Early morning's can be a bit dark, but when your heading into a cave it doesn't really matter too much! The guys headed off and all made it to the Mermaid and safely back to the boat. Mel and Jamie scooted around the deep entrance and into the cave to check out the 'others'.

The sea looked even calmer now, so we took the opportunity to get onto 12 Fathom Reef. As the name suggests the reef comes up to about 23m and falls to about 60m in very little time. The group headed off and came back after about 35mins. Jamie came up and said, "That is the prettiest dive I've ever done at The Poor Knights!" High praise indeed! It was even compared to Volkner Rocks for the amount of fishlife, 'like Blue Maomao Arch on a good day, but with various fish'. Mel came up and added, 'best you get your suit on and get a dive in'.

The others had lunch as I went for the dive. The anchor chain headed off into the deep at a slight angle and there wasn't much to see for the first 10-15m. Then the reef came into view and the first school of fish came up to greet me. A school of sweep checked me out and went about their way. The anchor was in about 30m and I hung just above it. A small gully in 28m was full of Pink Maomao just hanging around the two small mounds that mark the top of the reef. It was eas to just hang out in the gully and look at the fish - a tail-less Stingray cruised through and off along the reef.

As I hung out a large school of Demoiselle were keen to just follow me around - not that I was moving very far! A couple of Kingfish pierced the school and briefly circled before returning to the depths. On the other side of the reef another huge ball of Sweep were hanging off just waiting to be joined by a lone diver. As I approached they parted and then reformed behind me - the sort of thing that tropical divers rave about and us at The Poor Knights get to see from time to time.

Back toward the reef there were plenty of Pink Maomao swimming in a loose bunch. In between them were some Splendid Perch - a brighter, smaller fish with some beautiful purple markings that aren't seen too often. Here there were maybe six to ten of them spread out through the Maomao. On the way back through the gully a school of Trevally circled a couple of times just to add to the splendour of it all. So many different fish in such large numbers was truly amazing.

Time had passed and I'd covered about 20-25m of the reef. There was no need to move anywhere else. No-Deco was nearly up and back to the boat, but we'll be returning soon, with any luck!!

It was going to be impossible to top that dive, but we headed over to Scary Deep to try anyway. It would be a moving boat dive, but all the divers were experienced enough to make that nice and easy. A couple of laps meant that the divers could check out the rock at a few levels - 'a totaly different place at 25m and 10m'. Jamie spotted a Bronzy down in the deep, big Snapper hanging out and a school of Kingys were the highlights of the final dive of the weekend.

Great weather meant we'd managed to do three new sites for TechdiveNZ and a great one for me!