Tuesday 7 December Waiwhapuku Bay, aka Army Bay

Another beautiful day with light SW winds which influenced our choice of next spot to drop the hook. We snook up between Moturua Island and Motukiekie into Waiwhapuku bay, also known as army bay because there is a WW2 gun placement on the hill above the bay. When we arrived there were 2 day boats with trippers. Easily spotted by large areas of blue white flesh, turning to blue when they come out of the water. Still too cool for me to get in the water.

By mid afternoon the day boats headed back to town leaving the bay to us and our friends on Dignity. With the trippers gone David and I headed ashore to explore the walking track. This is a DOC (Department of Conservation) nature reserve with well marked tracks. On the way around, and many ups to top of the hill followed by downs to the bays, we met a DOC worker whose job it is to check and maintain the many stoat traps. Stoats are an introduced species that eat the eggs of ground nesting birds and thus upset the balance. He told us these wiley animals will swim across from the mainland. Why would they opt to swim when there must be plenty of food on the mainland? The traps are baited with a raw egg and pieces of rabbit meat. Nothing namby pamby about the kiwis catching their thief – these traps are deigned to kill. Close to the traps there are walk through boxes which the warden baits with peanut butter in the middle of a piece of inked card. The animal enters for a bite to eat, inks their paws and walks our over clean paper leaving a record of which small mammals are in the area and which have a peanut butter fetish.

The walk took us an hour of hard walking – it's good to push our hearts, lungs and muscles. Mussels hunting was next on the agenda. We'd been told the NE corner of the island, the one exposed to the open bay, was a good place to collect mussels at low water. Oh yes! The per person take limit is 50. I dropped David with his bucket and knife onto the kelp covered rocks away from the swell. He nipped over to the mussel beds and in 10 minutes had filled his bucket. We late counted the catch at 80. We dropped a dozen off to Dignity for them to try and the rest we took back to eat. Cleaning the beards, or the grippy foot, was the longest process as the outer shells were clear of barnacles. Then I cooked them with onions, garlic and white wine. They were bigger than the mussels I've had at home and couldn't have been fresher. I managed 20, David finished off the rest, almost 50. Oh, and no-one had any ill effects.