Cavalli Islands

An early morning visit into Matauri Bay this morning and we found our good friend Daniel waiting on the beach with his dive gear. So we picked Daniel up and headed out to the Cavalli's to check out what was going on.

In the water for about 5 minutes and Nathan had popped a decent blue Maomao and Daniel had a fat little kahawai. The place was teeming with fish! Nathan had his new 3mm wetsuit which made a massive difference to being able to get deep and take a full breath (compared to the 6.5mm suit). We headed in to the rocks to look for crayfish.

The first spot didn't yield any crayfish, but Daniel found a big pig fish and Nathan shot a fat Parore and another Maomao. Vela and Jamie jumped in for a dip as well and we played with the 360 camera amongst the schools of blue Maomao.

The second spot produced better results for crayfish. After finding some females in berry (with eggs), Nathan found the first potentially legal one and took it back to the boat to measure. While it looks large, it's a packhorse so the tail has to be 216mm long. We one fell just shy of the mark. After some more searching, Daniel yelled out that he had found a monster, and it really was! Nathan also ran into a big Porae to add to the freezer.

After a bit of figuring out how to deal to the cray, Vela cooked up an absolute feast. Looking forward to finding some more of these delicious treats over the coming weeks!Læs mere