Whale Watching
I left England Street at 7:30am to catch the Stray Bus from Base Backpackers at 8am. I bought the Ron pass that does a complete lap of the South Island ending in Christchurch. We head north to Kaikoura, stop once for mid-morning breakfast and arrive at our destination at midday. A quick bite to eat (well I had a roast lamb dinner!) before departing for the whale watching. Six of us from the Stray Bus are going so the driver gives us a lift to the information centre where we hang around for about 30 minutes reading about the Haka (Mauri tribal dance), sperm whales and catch the end of a national geographic film. Finally we board the boat and once we are past the choppy waves the captain engages full throttle and we head towards the whales! I went with Whale Watch Kaikoura and their website tells you all about the reasons why so much marine life is attracted to this part of ocean. One reason is that is one of only 3 places in the world where the ocean floor drops to a staggering 2000m only 500 metres from the coast. Because of this near unique feature whale's come to feed here, spending up to 2 hours on a return journey to the ocean floor where they gather much of their 1.5 tonnes requirement of food per day.
To find the whales one of the guys on board puts some headphones on and drops a long microphone device capable of listening to whale noises. The noises are a series of clicks sounding similar to clicking your fingers, however as the whales ascend closer to the surface the pitch of the clicking becomes inaudible to the human ear because they're at such high frequencies. The whale predominantly uses sound underwater to locate food and talk to one another. As sunlight doesn't penetrate below a depth of 50 metres it is complete darkness around the ocean floor where the whales go to feed on plankton and giant squid which have tentacles up to 20 metres long so echolocation comes in very handy. Sperm whales, may be other species too, have been known to consciously use echolocation to create a sonic boom to stun or sometimes kill a shark. They have the largest sound box (big space) in the animal kingdom, it makes sense as their head is 1/3 it's body length.
The man with microphone shouted over to the captain that a whale was about to surface somewhere close so we zoomed off to find it. After the boat had stopped everyone rushed outside to see the whale bobbing in the water spouting every 15 seconds or so. It was truly massive but you couldn't really get a proper idea as most of it's body was submerged. After about 20 minutes the whale started thrusting its body forwards to gain enough momentum for its next dive. The body disappeared then 2 seconds later the tail fluke came high up into the air then held it's position just long enough for a photo followed by a tail-slam into the water.
Next the boat turned around and headed to where the dusky dolphins were playing. One dolphin seemed like it had a trampoline just under the surface as it did about 10 perfect vertical leaps in a row. There must have been at least 200 dolphins all around the boat. For each dolphin at the surface you can add at least 3 more dolphins swimming beneath them as part of their pod. These were beautiful and I am quite tempted to go swimming with them at the next opportunity. Dolphins, like whales, are intelligent mammals with a high social order. Also they have been known to save divers by pushing them to the top, most of the time the divers don't actually want to be saved but hey, the dolphins probably know that! When you swim with them they love interacting, making noises, swimming around in circles and they will follow you.
After we had seen the second sperm whale we made our way back to sure. On the way we made a brief stop to watch a seal who had just popped up to the surface with a tasty octopus. They was a hungry albatross sitting in the water beside the seal waiting for any leftovers.
To find the whales one of the guys on board puts some headphones on and drops a long microphone device capable of listening to whale noises. The noises are a series of clicks sounding similar to clicking your fingers, however as the whales ascend closer to the surface the pitch of the clicking becomes inaudible to the human ear because they're at such high frequencies. The whale predominantly uses sound underwater to locate food and talk to one another. As sunlight doesn't penetrate below a depth of 50 metres it is complete darkness around the ocean floor where the whales go to feed on plankton and giant squid which have tentacles up to 20 metres long so echolocation comes in very handy. Sperm whales, may be other species too, have been known to consciously use echolocation to create a sonic boom to stun or sometimes kill a shark. They have the largest sound box (big space) in the animal kingdom, it makes sense as their head is 1/3 it's body length.
The man with microphone shouted over to the captain that a whale was about to surface somewhere close so we zoomed off to find it. After the boat had stopped everyone rushed outside to see the whale bobbing in the water spouting every 15 seconds or so. It was truly massive but you couldn't really get a proper idea as most of it's body was submerged. After about 20 minutes the whale started thrusting its body forwards to gain enough momentum for its next dive. The body disappeared then 2 seconds later the tail fluke came high up into the air then held it's position just long enough for a photo followed by a tail-slam into the water.
Next the boat turned around and headed to where the dusky dolphins were playing. One dolphin seemed like it had a trampoline just under the surface as it did about 10 perfect vertical leaps in a row. There must have been at least 200 dolphins all around the boat. For each dolphin at the surface you can add at least 3 more dolphins swimming beneath them as part of their pod. These were beautiful and I am quite tempted to go swimming with them at the next opportunity. Dolphins, like whales, are intelligent mammals with a high social order. Also they have been known to save divers by pushing them to the top, most of the time the divers don't actually want to be saved but hey, the dolphins probably know that! When you swim with them they love interacting, making noises, swimming around in circles and they will follow you.
After we had seen the second sperm whale we made our way back to sure. On the way we made a brief stop to watch a seal who had just popped up to the surface with a tasty octopus. They was a hungry albatross sitting in the water beside the seal waiting for any leftovers.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home