Australasia > New Zealand > South Island > Fiordland National Park > Articles > Diving the Milford Sound

It is shortly after we’ve emerged from our first dive in Milford Sound when I am forced to do a reality check.

For a moment, everything seems quite normal. In a sheltered cove, the small dive boat we are sitting in wobbles slightly on the olive green water.

Around me, three other cold but animated divers pull woollen beanies onto their heads and press steaming mugs of tea to their chattering lips. We all babble excitedly about the just-completed dive.

Then I look a way from the boat for a second. Just metres away on some rocks, is a gang of young New Zealand fur seals having the time of their lives. I watch them as they roll among the boulders and generally show off as if they were expecting somebody to reward them by throwing them a fish.

But it is not this which is so unusual. From the seals, my gaze travels upwards, over grey black rock, and upwards still, over a sheer but gnarled cliff face, until I am looking straight up at the top of one of Milford Sound’s smaller peaks.

Suddenly, sitting back in this tiny boat, I feel dwarfed by the immensity of my surroundings.

For the first time I realise properly that I am in Milford Sound. The previous night, I had cruised the Sound on a tired and touristy overnight boat trip, peering through the drizzle at the New Zealand icon and wondering what all the fuss was about. But now, I am suddenly struck by its true might and grandeur – something no postcard or glossy photograph could ever encapsulate.

All around us are towering, glowering peaks rising with perfect irregularity from the flat, green waters of the fjord. They look like huge slumbering monsters, wrapped in blankets of woolly cloud, their dark cheeks streaming with the tears of innumerable freshwater falls.

The Sound’s sense of mystery is unmistakable. It reminds me of the Maori legend behind its creation: that it was all the work of a beneficent God named Tu-Te-Rakikihanoa, who set about carving into the west coast of New Zealand’s South Island with his gigantic axe. Working from south to north, he gradually perfected his art, until finally he produced his masterwork: the massive crags and peaks of Milford Sound.

If the surroundings have anything to do with it, then Milford Sound is the most spectacular dive site in the world. After all, there cannot be many places in the world where you can dive in the shadow of a mile-high mountain like Mitre Peak.

But at Milford Sound the underwater scenery is nearly as unusual as that above. With so many falls dropping into the Sound, a permanent layer of tannin-stained freshwater – up to 10 metres deep - is formed on the surface of the saltier seawater beneath.

Diving through this is an eerie sensation, as you initially find yourself in virtually zero visibility and then gradually enter into the clearer, saltier water. It is in this next band near the top of the saltwater that the discoveries begin, with all kinds of marine flora and fauna driven closer than normal to the surface by the darkness of the layer above.

On our first dive, we all stick pretty close to Dave, our genial giant of a Dive Master, who knows these waters like the back of his hand. But the dive is thrilling nonetheless, as Dave takes us straight to some significant stands of black coral trees, which we learn later are over a hundred years old.

Early on, Dave’s trained eyes also pick out the flash of a blue shark’s tail as it speeds away from us toward the ocean. Later we come across a couple of tasty-looking crayfish and a toothy southern conger eel protruding from crevices and several spectacular starfish coiled around the branches of black coral.

Considering the darker layer of water above us the visibility is surprisingly good at around 10 metres and the temperature (around 15 degrees) quite bearable in our heavy-duty wetsuits.

Between dives, we have the time to delve into many of the Sound’s nooks and crannies, all the way out to the Tasman Sea at its mouth. The super-manoeuvrable dive boat takes us almost underneath two of the Sound’s most irrepressible falls, great gushes of icy mountain water crashing down with frightening noise and power.

Miraculously, during our break, the inclement late summer weather also begins to shift, with hollows of blue forming like jigsaw pieces in the predominant cloud cover above.

By the time we reach our second dive site, at Penguin Cove, the sun is shining and the water has brightened to an almost metallic green. It looks all the more inviting now and our confidence in this unfamiliar environment surroundings is up, after our initial dive.

We drop backwards into the cold water and descend as a group. This time the dive is a little shorter and not as deep, as we will have to ascend into the mountains later to get back to base at Te Anau and must therefore be extra-cautious about the risk of decompression.

Once again we find the black corals, which grow so successfully here in the fjords, and again, Dave, draws our attention to some small and colorful marine life such as anenomes, green and yellow sponges and some tiny delicate nudibranch slugs.

Then, as we near dive’s end, we sense a commotion in the water nearby. At first, it is hard to make out what it is. But then we see it clearly: a seal has come to join us, and, of course to demonstrate to us its superior underwater agility.

For at least five minutes, it dips and swerves and revels in front of us, disappearing out of sight for seconds and then zipping back into view from nowhere. It actually seems disappointed when its audience has to make its way to the surface.

As we journey back across the Sound the sun shines brightly and only the laziest clouds continue to grip the surrounding mountains. For the first time, Mitre Peak appears clearly, moody and resplendent, lording it over the entire Sound, and, in the sunshine, the large Bowen Falls seem to drop like an avalanche, sending brilliant white plumes all around it.

It is an unforgetable end to an unforgetable day and one that convinces me that diving the Sound gives you much more than a fascinating underwater experience. It is the best way to get a sense of its almost sculpted magnificence above the water too.

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