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Fiordland: The Facts...
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to jump to the relevant area):
Where is it? About Fiordland and Why it's worth a visit? Recommended dive sites? Fiordland Gallery? Local operators? Fiordland Web Sites and further reading?
Right down the bottom of New Zealand on the West Coast.
See
Map 
About Fiordland and Why it's worth a visit.
Diving in Fiordland is amazing and quite unique. There is a huge amount of water that flows off the land in this area causing a fresh water layer to sit on top of the salt water. This freshwater layer is stained with large quantities of Tannins from rotting organic matter. The fresh water layer can be as deep as ten metres depending on recent rain fall. This "stained" water blocks much of the light out from the clearer salt water deeper down causing a extra special environment for marine life. It's common to find fish and invertebrates that are usually only found well below recreational diving limits in less that twenty metres of water. One of the most common sights on dives in Fiordland is the huge Black Coral trees which are usually confined to the great depths. It's estimated that there are around 7 million colonies in the area. There are many huge specimens in shallow depths in Milford Sound.
There
are several species of small sharks as well as Seals, Sea horses, Wrasse, Penguins,
Butterfly Fish, Cray Fish and many more.
Sea Things Favorite Dive Sites
Milford Sound is the easiest to access of all the sounds and there fore is the most dived area. Despite the heavy usage within the area from Eco Tourists the underwater world is pretty well preserved and is well representative of the area. Make sure you have the dive flag up to fend off all the site seeing boats!
The diving requires excellent buoyancy control because it's wall diving. Many of the walls drop away to huge depths. Check out the Department of Conservation diving recommendations at the following: Diver Safety in Fiordland.
Want to recommend your favorite site (please do!), comment on a dive site or add to the description- e-mail the details and ideally GPS coordinated to: myfavedivesites@seathings.co.nz
All Photographs by Crispin Middleton, permission must be sought before using any of these pictures.
Please click on the image to open a larger image in a new window.
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Black Coral with Star Fish Milford Sound |
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Crested Penguins Milford Sound |
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Black Coral Milford Sound |
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Milford Sound Milford Sound |
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Tube Anemone Milford Sound |
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Homer Tunnel Milford Sound |
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Milford Sound Milford Sound |
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Sea Things Favorite Operators:
Tawaki Dive If you've just got one day, this is your best option. Dave and Sara are informative and fun with safety as a top priority. It's a fairly new thing to be able to dive in a day trip to Milford Sound. The road back to Te Anau from the Sound is very high and there fore all dives have to be very conservative. Maximum depths of 18 meters and strict bottom times limit the dives. This however will still give a fantastic taster into Milford diving. As well as the great dives available there is plenty of time to explore the Fiord between dives with informative commentaryfrom Tawaki Dive.
Talisker Charters also operates in Fiordland at certain times of the year.
Fiordland
Sites and further reading?
Department
of Conservation Site
Please e-mail any web-site or book suggestions to: suggestions@seathings.co.nz