January 30-31: Cape Brett and Poor Knight's Island

Started out early from Paihia town to Cape Brett's trek via water taxi.

 We did a moving landing onto a rock shelf and then ascended a steep trail to a retired lighthouse.

From the top of the cape we had an amazing view of the headlands.

It  was a hot and exposed hike of 3.5 miles that felt like more---trail often both very steep and very rough, with roots and big steps of mud or rock.

The forested part was filled with tree ferns and other unknown plants. Of interest were these possum traps as part of the program to eliminate all invasive animals by 2050.  The possums are marsupials from Australia. The trap is a white plastic killer trap at the bottom of the tree and the red markers indicate the location of all the traps set in this area.

Day 4 we headed out late on a commercial trip to Poor Knights Island Marine Preserve--a collection of small islands about 45 minutes boat ride from Tutukaka marina.  Got outfitted with snorkel/mask and full wetsuit---which we definitely needed. Snorkeled through a sea arch filled with colorful sponges, small schools of dotted fish with unknown Maori names, and some red and white anemones.

The coolest thing though was that the water was filled with these floating jellies that formed colonies but when you tried to pick the up they fell apart into small pea sized individuals.

The fish in the tunnel got into a feeding frenzy when I was in their midst--gobbling the surface jellies. The big 15" king fish also got into surface feeding frenzies, followed by the seagulls.

A close up of a strand of jellies.

Before coming back to port we circled around another small set of islands that was home to an Australasian Gannet colony.

The gannets are similar to what we witnessed in Scotland except the eggs were hatched and the babies were as big as their parents but still gray in color and some still at edge of nests but others already kicked out and out to sea!