Introducing: Goat Island Dive and Snorkel

Two young adventurers have taken on Goat Island Dive and Snorkel, at Leigh, to help more people start their own journey on the Mahurangi coast.Stone Meharry says he “basically grew up at Goat Island” during weekly excursions with his family while living in Leigh and Matakana. Diving soon became his fixation and he took a diving course at Goat Island Dive when he was 15.

“I’ve always loved the ocean,” Stone says. “Just being underwater is such a great feeling.”

After qualifying as a diving tutor in Albany and working at Goat Island, Stone went to Fiji to work as a dive instructor at a resort, where he met Tine Flokken.

Tine grew up in Norway, but says her formative years were spent travelling the world while studying at the United Nations Academy.

“I went to the Middle East, throughout Europe and ended up in Africa for my final project, filming a documentary on child soldiers in Uganda and South Sudan. I was only 18 and we were basically in a war zone, getting smuggled through borders and trying to interview people at rehabilitation camps.”

After studying international politics, Tine travelled to Fiji to work on an aid project where she met Stone while diving.

The couple spent six months as crew on a 100-year-old, 30-metre “pirate ship”, crashing through storms and becoming stalled in windless seas for a month while sailing to Australia.

They have been based in Mahurangi since January and bought the dive shop in October.

Goat Island Dive and Snorkel runs guided snorkel tours, taking over 30 schools to the reserve each year, and PADI dive courses up to the level of Dive Master.

“Working with children is a thrill. You can see their faces light up when they first look under the water,” Tine says.

“It’s the perfect way to teach them about the environment and inspire a new generation.”

They also want to start night dive and snorkel tours and underwater photography and videography courses.