NZ photo journal

[AlexF]

Just the first batch of the photos. All underwater photos were taken by Darren Shields.

Will load some more latter when I have time to reduce the size of the original ones.

http://i170.photobucket.com/albums/u278/AlejF/New%20Zeland/_DSC4447a.jpg
http://i170.photobucket.com/albums/u278/AlejF/New%20Zeland/_DSC4444a.jpg
http://i170.photobucket.com/albums/u278/AlejF/New%20Zeland/IMG_0383.jpg
http://i170.photobucket.com/albums/u278/AlejF/New%20Zeland/_DSC4465a.jpg
http://i170.photobucket.com/albums/u278/AlejF/New%20Zeland/_DSC4461a.jpg
http://i170.photobucket.com/albums/u278/AlejF/New%20Zeland/IMG_0391.jpg
http://i170.photobucket.com/albums/u278/AlejF/New%20Zeland/IMG_0450.jpg
http://i170.photobucket.com/albums/u278/AlejF/New%20Zeland/IMG_0457.jpg
http://i170.photobucket.com/albums/u278/AlejF/New%20Zeland/IMG_0407.jpg
http://i170.photobucket.com/albums/u278/AlejF/New%20Zeland/_DSC4529.jpg

[SpearMax]

Wow! those are some great photos and fish!

[kjflyfish]

Alex - that vis is insane! Did you stay at Three Kings the whole time?

[zenspearo]

very nice pix. Awesome!

[takowill]

Nice!

[virgili]

This question is for my friend Darren: are all pics taken in TK Islands, the visi is too good!
Nice kingie and nice dorado++

[grouperdude]

i hear that yt are like the amber jack on the east coast.. do yellowtails get worms?
figured some one would no

[apnea_beast]

fantastic!

[AlexF]

I actually never got to 3 Kings. A wind storm came in and we got stuck in Great Barrier Is. the whole time. Did have a great time though, even if we couldn´t get to see the rest of the area.

http://i170.photobucket.com/albums/u278/AlejF/New%20Zeland/_DSC4541.jpg
http://i170.photobucket.com/albums/u278/AlejF/New%20Zeland/IMG_0925.jpg
http://i170.photobucket.com/albums/u278/AlejF/New%20Zeland/_DSC4574.jpg

[AlexF]

Few more pics

Panoramic
http://i170.photobucket.com/albums/u278/AlejF/New%20Zeland/Panorama2.jpg

http://i170.photobucket.com/albums/u278/AlejF/New%20Zeland/_DSC4568.jpg
http://i170.photobucket.com/albums/u278/AlejF/New%20Zeland/_DSC4560.jpg
http://i170.photobucket.com/albums/u278/AlejF/New%20Zeland/IMG_0917.jpg
http://i170.photobucket.com/albums/u278/AlejF/New%20Zeland/IMG_0912.jpg
http://i170.photobucket.com/albums/u278/AlejF/New%20Zeland/_DSC4558.jpg
http://i170.photobucket.com/albums/u278/AlejF/New%20Zeland/_DSC4489.jpg
http://i170.photobucket.com/albums/u278/AlejF/New%20Zeland/_DSC4494.jpg
http://i170.photobucket.com/albums/u278/AlejF/New%20Zeland/_DSC4584.jpg

[kjflyfish]

Man, you lucked out with the vis. That is one killer trip, and with the guy who wrote the book on NZ spearfishing. Nice going on the boarie too.

[kjflyfish]

i hear that yt are like the amber jack on the east coast.. do yellowtails get worms?
figured some one would no

Same genus, different species, and nope, yellowtail do not get worms.

yellowtail kingfish: Seriola lalandi

greater amberjack: Seriola dumerili

[kill shot]

Awesome pics and fish Alex.

Very Jealous!!!

[jonahtribe2]

These are some amazing photos, hope I get the same luck when I visit in Feb and March!

[bombard666]

Nice fish man, i miss shooting Yellowtail....

[njspearo]

nice picts,
what kind of fish are those your holding underwater, one is the fourth pict down on the last big pict post you made

[SnpperWhisperer]

It's a Giant Boarfish (so is the second from last pic in the lfirst pic post, one is male and one is female). They are a quite large and very good eating fish, usually found where the weed meets the sand from 15m depth plus. Can be easy to approach, but sometimes they spook. Common in northern NZ waters, and apparently getting more common every year at the moment. In Aussie these are found in Sth Australia but don't seem to be as common as over here.
The other pictures are of course NZ snapper (a porgy) and kingfish (yellowtail). The last picture is a John Dory - another very good eating fish.

AlexF, it looks like Darren showed you the best of the local diving - some nice snappper for someone not familiar with our diving, nice kingies, some scallops, boaries, squid, etc. Some great diving by the looks of it. Good work.

[AlexF]

My only coment to the last post is that they aren't common, either boarfish, snapper or john dory. Sometimes I swam for a couple of hours only to find a single snapper and either boarfish or dory's. I searched for dorys for over a week and only found one on the last day. They are difficult to see though. Out of 3 divers we only found 3 on a 10 day trip. Boarfish I think we caught 5.

The Snapper is an interesting fish to catch. They are just so warry. It just makes them so challenging but it was sometimes frustrating to search all day for them and not see a single decent sized one. Maybe a lot of this had to do with our inexperience and not the lack of fish.

On the kingfish, there's lots of them, but you can pretty much name the big fish and see them every time you go to the same spot. The schools must not change much and are prone to overfishing.