Doubtful Sound [February 17]

"Jagged razor backed mountains rear their heads into the sky. More than 200 days of rain a year ensure not a tree branch is left bare and brown, moss and epiphytes drape every nook. The forest is intensely green. This is big country... one day peaceful, a study in green and blue, the next melancholy and misty, with low cloud veiling the tops... an awesome place, with its granite precipices, its hanging valleys, its earthquake faults and its thundering cascades." - Charles John Lyttelton about Doubtful Sound.

Enjoy the pictures. :)






Doubtful Sound was named 'Doubtful Harbour' by Captain Cook, who did not enter the inlet as he was uncertain whether it was navigable under sail.


It was later renamed Doubtful Sound by whalers and sealers.




Doubtful Sound is three times longer and ten times greater than Milford Sound. Doubtful Sound is also less commercialised and is frequently referred to as the "Sounds Of Silence".






Doubtful Sound is unusual in that it contains two distinct layers of water that do not mix. The top few meters is fresh water, fed from the high inflows from the surrounding mountains. Below this is a layer of cold, heavy, sakt water from the sea. The difference between these two layers makes it difficult for light to penetrate. Thus, many deep-sea species will grow in the comparatively shallow depths of the Sound.


There are three distinct arms to the sound.


A Kea - also knows as the 'Clowns of the mountains'.

Next: Milford Sound...