The second morning of our second day in Kaikoura brought us to a small dive shop on West End. Here, everyone in the group suited up in a wetsuit, grabbed a mask and snorkel, and loaded up on a reasonably cramped bus to head down towards a marina where two small boats awaited. After splitting into two groups, everyone loaded up on the boats, weighed anchor, and headed out to some rocky shallows, not without seeing some bonus little blue penguins along the way. After finding a small inlet with some wet seals on the rocks, our skipper told us we were clear to enter the water. I was very excited, so I immediately slid off the side of the boat, gently into the water. We swam up slowly to the shallows, and seemingly instantly there was a tail poking up above the water, and under the surface were two giant round eyes staring at all of us very curiously, and with a swift pump of the pectoral fins, it disappeared into the waters beyond. Over our time there, we were surrounded and approached by several seal pups and subadults, all of them just as curious about us as we were of them. Some of them were cheekier than others, as one of them swam up to my hand, reversed itself, and proceed to flatulate on my non-working camera, which I and several other people on that dive found incredibly hilarious. After spending about an hour, which flew by incredibly quickly, we boarded the boat again and headed off back to shore. On the way back, we saw another bonus chunk of wildlife, with our skippers spotting a group of orca in the distance. This got me very excited, because two things I thought I would have to wait years to actually do happened in one day. At that point, I could strike two major things off the bucket list: Swimming with a unique ocean mammal, the New Zealand Fur Seal, and seeing orcas in the wild and in their natural habitat.
Whale Watch:
After a cold and fairly tiring seal swim, the group had a free afternoon to spend how they pleased. Before even leaving for the trip, a group of us booked a whale watching excursion with Whale Watch Kaikoura. After a short safety video, we boarded a significantly more comfortable bus and headed to another marina, this one further away than the seal swim one. Once there, we boarded a waka, or boat, named the Tohoraha, the Maori name for the Southern Right Whale. Once on board, we listened to our highly energetic tour guide and narrator give us a run-down on what to expect on our trip out to sea, mainly that we should expect to see a sperm whale at the surface while it caught its breath after a long hunting dive, as well as showing us a few examples of the sounds the sperm whale makes when it echolocates or is actively hunting. The boat was incredibly quick, reaching 30 knots on the surface of the water, and taking us ten miles out into open water in just about fifteen minutes. Once out far enough, the boat quickly stopped from full speed in just one boat-length! After we had stopped, the captain stepped out onto the edge of the ship and lowered a hydrophone into the water to listen for the distinct sound of sperm whale echolocation. Our tour guide pointed out that when the captain said the water was silent, the whale was coming back up to the surface. After about 20 minutes of waiting, a couple on the other side of the boat saw the first spout, and the boat went up alongside the whale for the duration of its rest on the surface. After about 25-30 minutes of resting, the whale dipped its massive head down, lifted up the tail, and slipped back into the sea for another hunt in the underwater canyon system surrounding Kaikoura. Afterward, the waka started to move again, and we started to move around to see if we could find anything else interesting. Sure enough, some people spotted multiple spouts in the distance, so we headed over toward the spouts to see if we could see what was there. After a few minutes of chasing this new pod, I was excitedly seeing if I could identify what they were before the captain or the tour guide did. Sure enough, I saw a signature sickle-shaped dorsal fin emerge after a spout, when I shouted from the top of the boat, “They’re fin whales!” Seemingly no time later, our boat was in the middle of an entire pod of fin whales, with spouts emerging from the water from all directions possible. I was completely in awe, and in complete disbelief that not half an hour after witnessing the largest toothed predator on the planet, we were surrounded by several of the second largest being to ever exist on this Earth. In the words of our tour guide, “Mother Nature, cut it out!”
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