Scuba diving in Milford Sound

I already mentioned it briefly in the last post, but today I am going to talk a bit more about Milford Sound, one of the most beautiful and famous fjords in New Zealand. Milford Sound (Māori: Piopiotahi) is a fjord in the south west of New Zealand's South Island, within Fiordland National Park (see last post's map). Some people even called it the eighth Wonder of the World...

Most of the tourists who come to this majestic place take a boat tour or a kayak trip, but this time I wanted to do things a bit differently and contacted a scuba diving school which offers a combination of the boat tour (to admire the fjord and waterfalls) and 2 x 40 minutes dives. The specificity of Milford Sound when diving is that you dive through a layer of blurry ice-cold fresh water, which is stained with tannins from the forest trees, and when you reach the clear salt water huge trees of rarely seen black coral greet you. When you exit the water, giant waterfalls surround the boat. I also wanted to experience diving in cold waters and Milford Sound didn't disappoint as the water was ranging between 13 degrees Celsius at the surface, with a minimum of 10 degrees around 26 meters, which was the maximum depth we reached that day. I can say that even with the two-piece 7mm wetsuit they provide you, you really start feeling cold after 20 minutes! But overall it was a truly a great experience.

Milford Sound... Truly majestic

View of the "harbour"

When suddenly dolphins appear! Everyone on the boat got excited!

Nico jumping in the water to catch the dolphins

Check at 0:25, the dolphins were really quick and hard to get on video!

Myself in the water, a few minutes later. © Descend Scubadiving

Here are the legendary black corals. Milford Sound is one of the rare places in the world where we can admire them, because of the layer of fresh water which blocks the sun. Otherwise black corals are usually found at about 100m below the surface, too deep for recreational diving. © Descend Scubadiving

Hello! - © N. Martens

© N. Martens

© N. Martens

A fish, can't remember the name... © N. Martens

Back on the boat, the captain gets really close to the waterfall. © Descend Scubadiving

A colony of seals enjoying the rare sunshine

Back to the harbour

On the way back, a Kea was playing on our car...