FACTS ABOUT FIORDLAND
• Fiordland’s rugged west coast is indented by 12 fiords – also known as sounds – and two inlets leading to three more fiords, spanning 215km of coast.
• Some stretch 40km inland from the Tasman Sea. The fiords become wider and the mountains lower and less steep as you travel down from north to south.
• Milford Sound, the most northerly fiord, is the most famous and the only one accessible by road, rated one of the world’s finest drives.
• Part of the vast Te Wāhipounamu World Heritage Site, Fiordland National Park is one of the world’s largest, covering 12,607 sq km.
• Known as ‘the walking capital of the world’, Fiordland National Park’s excellent tramping trails include three of our 10 Great Walks – Milford, Kepler and Routeburn tracks.
• In Māori legend, Tu-te-raki-whanoa carved out the fiords with his adze Te Hamo. Māori came to collect food and the translucent greenstone, takiwai.
• James Cook and his crew were the first Europeans to visit (1770) and spent five weeks at Dusky Sound in 1773. Sealers and whalers, later miners, arrived in the late 1700s. These were the first pākehā settlements in Aotearoa.
• Much of the region is heavily forested with native trees and almost completely unspoilt. Underneath are shrubs and ferns with patches of bog.
• It’s home to threatened native birds such as takahē, kiwi, blue duck (whio) and yellowhead (mōhua).
• About 300 species are found only here, including the Fiordland skink, giant weta, egg-laying worms – and native sandflies. Seals, albatross, penguins and marine life abound.
One morning we walk for an hour or so, in the sunshine, along the bays to the lighthouse at Puysegur Point, and back to the ship. One afternoon Barraclough kills the engines and Swale coaches us in fishing for blue cod; next morning, in the Tasman swells, we try our luck.
Blue cod must be the least intelligent fish in the sea: I take three, brought aboard on the electric reel, before Swale calls time. He’s an advocate for sustainable fishing and the passengers are only allowed to
catch enough to eat. It’s a fair fight, though: albatross and mollymawks, squawking off the bow, want to take the fish off our hooks.
Barraclough kills the engine near rocky islets and Rob and Jack Swale and Peranen dive for lobster (not crayfish, technically); another afternoon Rob Swale and Peranen harvest pāua that she cooks for dinner. Constitutionally unable to digest shellfish, I graciously allow my shipmates to eat my share. Sustainable dining, if you please.
We moor in a harbour where Captain Cook landed; that, says Barraclough, is the 250-year-old tree he used as a gangplank. We hike to a lake on an island in a fiord. We kayak through reeds into a river and right up to a waterfall that features in one of Aotearoa’s most famous early artworks. We visit a long-since decommissioned mine, the world’s first offshore bird sanctuaries. A young seal greets us in the trees.
Every day, seabirds glide, dolphins frolic, penguins tumble around the ship. Cameras snap. Come evening, we relax in the hot tub as the crew navigate narrow channels, often in the rain, trees and ferns overhanging.
Sydney Parkinson posted the first Instagrams of the fiords, peaks, forests, waterfalls: he was the artist aboard Endeavour. But there’s another landscape of trees, valleys, waterways and life here: hundreds of metres below the water, and we’ll explore it from the warmth of the saloon.
The ROV – remote operated vehicle – is an underwater robot fitted with lights that attract marine life and illuminate the dark underwater environment. Harnessed to the ship by
“THERE’S A LITTLE BIT OF EVERYTHING THAT MAKES UP THE KIWI EXPERIENCE.”
600m of fibre-optic cable, Jack Swale controls its underwater cameras up to 600m from and beneath the ship. The footage is beamed live to the saloon’s HD TV screen.
These fiords are one of the wettest places on Earth. That rainfall creates a layer of fresh water up to 7m deep which, with runoff from the trees and mountains, creates a light barrier and encourages deepwater plants and animals to thrive close to the surface.
Cameras pick up lacy black coral trees hundreds of years old – worth more than diamonds if they could be harvested (that’d be a no, says DOC). Marine species include sponges and lampshells, starfish and those lobsters – even a few blue cod we might have missed earlier in the week.
It’s not a toy. Working with NIWA scientists, the crew have discovered several unknown species, including the giant sea pen, a primitive plant that lives at 120m, confirmed by sending Jack Swale’s footage to Stanford University, California.
For Rob Swale, it’s one more argument for convincing people of what his unique home has to offer. “There’s a little bit of everything that makes up the Kiwi experience – fishing, diving, kayaking, hiking, the scenery and the wildlife. And then there is just as much under the sea as above it.”
As the Fiordland Jewel noses into the wharf at Deep Cove, everyone is reminded we’ve arrived back in New Zealand, back in 2020: our phones start pinging. For the first time since we boarded the helicopter at Te Anau a week ago, we have reception. It’s probably the first time any of us have noticed that we didn’t.
Fiordland Discovery is taking bookings for Fiordland and Stewart Island cruises in 2021. Visit fiordlanddiscovery.co.nz.