"...The Bay of Islands has the second bluest skies in the world. It’s official. A climatologist measured them. Of course, he might have just been on holiday here and wanted to make it tax-deductible… but, from the water, on a sunny day, it’s hard to disagree with the scientist’s findings. The sky is blue as a bastard. The sea is even less legitimate. And with safe, protected waters, plenty of accessible boat ramps and a glut of reasonably priced small motor boats, it would be churlish not to get out on the water. Laura is an experienced diver who in the past had immersed herself in the cold waters around Scotland, apparently for fun, so for her the South Pacific, which drops to a perishing sixteen degrees in the winter, is absurdly warm.
The bay isn’t exactly a desert, either. Scallops abound and, whilst scuba diving for them is no more fun than picking field mushrooms, no one refused natures bounty because it wasn’t pretty enough. Besides, the saltwater crayfish is also plentiful here and they are, in my opinion, even better fare than lobsters (and they have no snappy claws, although they do have spiny spines). Our diving, before we came here, was mainly for the amazing sights of the sub-aquatic realm. We had never taken seafood home with us, but here the emphasis is different. Certainly, there are some wonderful vistas to be seen. Indeed, the amazing Jacques Cousteau proclaimed the Poor Knights Islands one of the top five dive sites in the world, but New Zealanders feast on food as well as views, and if the food is free, then why wouldn’t they?  So off we go, harvesting scallops from the sandy shallows of the bay and daring to grab crayfish from their rocky holes (and trusting that we’re not just thrusting our mitts into the maw of a Moray!)..."