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Whales and Dolphins
During our first visit to Kaikoura, on our way from Abel Tasman National Park to Lake Taupo, our planned Whale Watching trip was canceled due to heavy seas. Since we now had a couple of days to spare and it isn't too far from Christchurch we returned for another try.
We joined Wings over Whales, a small company which offers Whale Watching trips by small planes, as they were recommended to us by good friends. After a short briefing we boarded the plane and headed out to see. A short while later the pilot spotted the first Fin Whale and circled it. But it wasn't the only one around and at one time we spotted four of them swimming close together. The advantage of observing them from a plane was that we were able to see the whole whale, which gave us an impression of it's massive size. (The Fin Whale is the second largest Whale, only surpassed by the Blue Whale.)
After this cool experience we decided on short notice to also go Dolphin watching the next day. Since this trip was extremely popular, there were only places for the 5:30am or the afternoon tour (by which time we wanted to be back in Christchurch). So after some deliberation we decided to brave the early morning and joined Kaikoura Dolphin Encounter. The main attraction of this trip was swimming with the Dolphins, but since this is extremely popular, it was sold out and we could only join as spectators. However, this wasn't too bad, since it gave us more opportunity to take pictures :).
We saw mainly Dusky Dolphins, which are famous for their playfulness. So when the swimmers got into the water and made strange noises (as directed), the dolphins stayed around to take a closer look. Another aspect of their playfulness is that they perform acrobatic backflips, which are extremely hard to capture on camera, or repeated jumping out of the water. All in all they are great to watch.
One of the highlights, which even the tour guides hadn't seen too often, was that the dolphins herded a school of fish into a baitball and continually ate them (normally they only feed during the night), this of course also attracted lots of birds and so we spotted Hutton's Shearwater, Albatross and Australasian Gannets.
So it was a great decision to take the early morning tour, especially since the tour guides commented, that the dolphins are most active in the morning. Next time we might try to get a swimming spot though, that also looked awesome!Labels: new zealand, pictures, traveling
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