As the producer of the TV series South Seas Spearo, I regularly get to film in some of the more remote parts of the country, places that are rarely captured on camera. From the cold, dark waters of Fiordland, to distant offshore islands like Solander, Pitt, and the Manawatāwhi group, our adventures often take us deep into the great unknown.

So, it’s always an exciting time at the end of each year when the team and I get to sit down over a few cold beers and brainstorm the various wild places we could explore over the next series. However, despite our enthusiasm to film there, we’ve hit a wall with one location that we just haven’t been able to tick off.

Westhaven.

Now, to save any confusion, I’m not talking about the Southern Hemisphere’s largest recreational marina, located smack bang in the centre of Auckland City, but the Westhaven situated near the very northwestern tip of the South Island.

Loading up at the derelict wharf at Mangarakau.

Lying just south of Farewell Spit, Westhaven was once a bustling seaport, which offered shelter from westerly storms, hence the name. This rugged part of the country provides boaties with just a handful of opportunities to cross its notorious bar each year, as the weather in this region rarely lowers its guard.

It’s about as far removed from its namesake as possible, which is why it’s been on our hit list since the inception of the show. But the windswept isolation that we so value has also meant that we’ve been skunked each and every time plans were put in place to try our luck there.

Until this year that is.

It was late summer. We’d spent a couple of weekends in Kaikoura trying and failing to find a swordfish on the surface for our man Dwane Herbert to spear (another story altogether), and despite how exciting that may sound on paper, the long days at sea were starting to get extremely tedious. So, after looking at the long-range forecast one evening, we saw there was a pretty good weather window forming for a trip to Westhaven, which could allow us to get out off the coast to dive the celebrated Kahurangi Shoals, a shallow reef structure located five miles offshore.

This rugged part of the country provides boaties with just a handful of opportunities each year, as the weather in this region rarely lowers its guard.

A week later, after making the long drive from Nelson over the Tākaka hill, the team and I assembled in Collingwood, and after loading the boat with dive gear and cameras, alarms were set for the ungodly hour of 2.30am the following morning, as we would be slaves to the outgoing tide.

The ‘Quarterback’ of this shoot, Nelson’s Tim Barnett, had calculated that by the time we’d towed the boat over the hill to the derelict wharf and ramp at Mangarakau, we’d have enough water under us with the outgoing tide to get all the way out across the shallow estuary to a point where we could have a coffee and wait for the light to strengthen, before we would make an attempt to cross the notorious Whanganui Inlet bar.

A solid plan. However, the execution of said plan – not so solid.

First hiccup – the bung. Tim had misplaced it after cleaning his new boat a couple of days earlier. No major, just half an hour of faffing around in the dark, swearing under our breath, before we discovered that we could use the bungs from the livebait tank. The clock was ticking though, as they say – time and tide wait for no man. We were a bit behind schedule now, but our next issue was far more problematic.

Prowling through a dense school of kahawai, a Kahurangi Shoals kingfish can be spotted.

Our underwater cameraman Sam Wild is normally the personification of professionalism, but on this day, he’d somehow left his entire underwater camera rig sitting on his bed back in Collingwood. A 4.30am phone call to Tim’s Dad to arrange a rapid drop-off was made, and we gingerly followed our crumb trail on the Garmin sounder back up the estuary to collect the vital piece of kit from the ramp. Luckily for us all though, Tim’s calculations as to the tide time had veered wildly on the safe side. By 6.30am, as the first glow of light was warming the distant hills, we were back out to the bar crossing, having only rubbed the belly of the boat once.

They say bad luck happens in threes, but thankfully, the bar crossing was a cakewalk, and we were soon out in the big blue. But unfortunately, it wasn’t quite as blue as we all had hoped for. When diving such a remote spot as this, you’ve got to roll the dice when it comes to visibility – there’s no one to call and ask for a viz report – so we had to suck it up and just hope that the tide and current may have had some cleaning effect once we got out to the reef itself.

But whilst both the viz and the water temperature (13.7°C) weren’t hot, the bait-balling action on the surface certainly was. On our arrival at Kahurangi Shoals, we were greeted by teeming masses of fish, all busting up on the surface. I wasted little time in getting the drone up in the air to film the action from above, and whilst I didn’t realise it at the time, I inadvertently captured some footage of a nice-sized kingfish prowling through the dense school of kahawai and mackerel – a good sign of things to come.

As per usual, Dwane was first to get suited and booted. He quickly broke the ice with a small snapper, a pleasant surprise here in the Top of the South. It turned out the visibility down deep wasn’t as bad as near the surface, and over the course of the morning, Dwane was able to knock over a number of other tasty tablefish, including trevally, trumpeter, blue cod, and a nice-sized kingfish.

The fish of the day, Dwane’s 25kg kingie.

Tim and Sam also got in on the action, banging over a few fish each, although one interesting thing jumped out at us – a lot of the fish seemed to have misshapen fins and injuries. The first two trevally had very tatty fins, Sam’s snapper had fused dorsal spines and looked like it had recovered after a chunk had been taken out of its rear, and the fish of the day, Dwane’s 25kg kingie, had a ‘joker’ like smile, possibly due to a fisherman’s hook. The big kingfish also had a much smaller tail than normal for a fish of that size, so if anyone out there has any theories as to why the fish on the Kahurangi Shoal seem to be so beaten up, then we’d love to hear them.

All in all, the spearfishing went as well as we could have hoped. Whilst there had been talk during the planning stages of the trip of the possibility of a ‘puka in this spot, or even a gamefish turning up out of the blue (a marlin had been hooked and lost the week prior off Farewell Spit), I was pretty happy with what we’d captured for the show. I’ll admit, I did get excited when I thought I had spied the elusive sickle shape of a broadbill fin on the surface, which turned out to be a mollymawk, but I was more than happy to take the satisfaction of a bin full of tasty eating fish over the inevitable disappointment that goes hand in hand with South Island big game spearfishing.

However, the most exciting moment of the entire trip did involve an encounter with a South Island gamefish, although an entirely different category of gamefish altogether. 

Normal human beings tend to move rapidly in the opposite direction when an apex predator turns up, but the mad buggers I have to deal with prefer to make a beeline for the sharp end of any fish that comes within range. In this instance, following our first trumpeter being shot, just as I was filming Tim holding the fish to his lips to try and play it like an actual trumpet, a fin suddenly appeared about 20m away off the starboard side.

Normal human beings tend to move rapidly in the opposite direction when an apex predator turns up… not the South Seas Spearo crew, however!

Again, the drone was rapidly deployed, and captured some stunning footage of a beautiful mako shark, gliding along the surface parallel to the boat.

Over the next half hour, we tried valiantly to get both Sam and Dwane in the water alongside the curious mako, but the horrendous visibility on the surface meant that even though they closed the gap to within ten metres of the shark at one point, all they could make out on the underwater camera was a vague shadow moving rapidly away from them. Still, it made for a pretty cool sequence, but one that probably will require a disclaimer for viewers to “not try this at home.”

To round out the day, we punched in close to the coast for a quick harvest of pāua and crayfish amongst the seal colonies, but conditions here amongst the surge and swell required a bit of braille diving from the boys. They eventually got the job done though, the professionals that they all are, whilst photographer Cam Henderson and I caught a few Zs aboard the boat. 

The boys filled the YETI cooler with a seafood smorgasbord.

I’ve spent over 15 years filming fishing, hunting and now diving shows, so there aren’t many places that I haven’t had the privilege of visiting. Westhaven and the top western coastline of the South would have to rank right up there amongst the prettiest parts of our stunning country – it really is a remarkable part of New Zealand. It’s unlike anything I’ve seen before, resembling a blend of Fiordland and Rakiura/Stewart Island; with lush ferns and nikau palms that run right down to the sea, along with towering limestone bluffs and intricate sandstone formations. It all makes for quite a unique landscape, and one that I’m proud to have had the chance to finally shine a light on.

- Words by Dave Shaw
- Images by Cam Henderson and Dave Shaw