This was a fishing trip, but an interesting trip as well. All the photos are scanned from prints. For some reason I don't have a picture of the whole island. Look on Google and Google Earth for photos and more information.
White Island is an active volcano 50km off the east coast of NZ. I am sure you remember about the eruption last year when there were about 50 tourists from a cruise ship on the island. 21 people were killed and many others suffered horrible burns from a mixture of steam, ash and sulfuric acid twice as strong as battery acid, they described one victim as only having 2 handprint sized patches not burnt on their body.
The island is mostly quiet with only steam from the crater lake and sulfur vents, but can erupt violently with an ash cloud high in the air.
It has always been a tourist destination from Whakatane by boat and helicopter, but this had become more popular recently with so many cruise ships in our waters, the Maori owners had publicised the trip and charged $100 a person to land there, supplying hard hats and breathing masks and a guide but not much else.
Our earthquake warning system monitors all areas of NZ but especially known hot spots, the Islands activity had been raised from a normal 1/ risk to a 2/ risk (out of 5) a few days before the eruption.
About 20 years ago a group of us booked deep sea fishing charters around the North Island. One was to the waters around white island and it's associated reefs for 4 days, usually overnighting at white for shelter and to catch bait fish including flying fish which came to the boat lights at night, a quick scoop with a landing net sometimes worked.
One day the skipper asked if some of us wanted to land on the island and have a look around, so we were offloaded on to a piece of concrete with careful boat manoevering for each of us.
No safety equipment, just what we were wearing at the time, no guide or advice, just be back in an hour. This is an interesting photo as it has similar errosion patterns as mountain ranges seen from above
I have seen most of the thermal areas around NZ, but this was so different, a complete absence of life in the crater area, just steam, sulfur and bare earth. There is some scrubby growth on the outside of the crater.
The nerd with a beard was me (closer to my prime) the crater lake could just be seen through the steam about 30 feet down. Before last years eruption it was nearly full.
This was the trip I caught the big bass, and this is the catch we took home for the 4 days. We spent a bit of time catching Kingfish on jigs, most of these were released.
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