Welcome to Total Bottom Time!

Total Bottom Time is my online personal dive log. A place where I can share my dives with friends, family, other divers, and the world. You can find out a bit more about me and see my full log of dives by clicking on my profile on the right. Feel free to subscribe to my dives via email or RSS.

Below are just some of my latest dives.

I went to Rakiura Stewart Island to cage dive with great white sharks! We made the trek down to Bluff and jumped on the boat with Shark Experience. Then the boat motored down to Motunui Edwards Island, just off Stewart Island.

We were even visited by some Mollymawks, a species of Albatross, on our way out.

Mollymawk

As soon as we got there we got ready to get in the water as soon as there was the first great white shark sighting.

Dive Prep

It didn't take long. As a "site see-er" my partner was on the lookout for the telltale fin out of the water and she pointed it out to the crew as soon as she saw one. Five of us got into the cage right away and got our first look at a great white.

Great White Shark

People rotated in and out of the cage during the morning to get a look at the sharks. We were visited by 3, maybe 4 sharks throughout the day.

Great White Shark

The one great white that kept coming back again and again was Jonah. He's the one with the tracker attached to his back. He stuck ...

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I completed the PADI Freediver course. It’s been a course I’ve wanted to do for a few years. After scuba diving for so long, I was never sure if freediving was something I’d be comfortable with.

The only way I could figure that out safely was to take a course. It’s really challenging physically and mentally but I found that I was pretty comfortable with it.

Looking back on it, the day in the pool was relatively easy.

Pool Day

The day in the ocean was a lot for me as a first-time freediver. I did 18 freedives and progressively worked my way down to 12m. Each freedive was less than a minute. I can do a “static” breath hold for almost 2 minutes but doing a “dynamic” breath hold while finning down the line is a much different scenario!

 

Ocean Day

My depth progression throughout the day.

1. 4.8m
2. 4.3m
3. 5.5m
4. 7.1m
5. 7.7m
6. 9.3m
7. 5.8m
8. 7.1m
9. 6.5m
10. 7.9m
11. 8.0m
12. 9.2m
13. 10.3m
14. 10.4m
15. 10.4m
16. 11.2m
17. 11.5m
18. 11.8m

We did the loss of motor control (LMC) rescue scenario and ended ...

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My next dive of the day was "around the block", where we entered the bay on the left of the snorkel trail and then dived around to the bay on the right of the snorkel trail. However, this time I was diving with some people new to the trail and they (inadvertently) took a shortcut through the shallows of the rocks between the two bays.

I didn't mind at all because being in the shallows makes for a different dive and I even saw a Green-boned Butterfish for the first time at the site. It wasn't easy to spot!

Green-boned Butterfish

Spot the Purple (Green) Wrasse.

Purple Wrasse

At the end of the dive, there was a small school of Yelloweye Mullet just below the surface.

Yelloweye Mullet

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