Day 19 Kaikoura

Last night we were lulled to sleep by the Pacific Ocean rollers come into the beach opposite our motel room – the perfect end to wonderful day.  We have woken up to another fine day – a lot of blue sky and a warm temperature.  Today is the day we go whale watching and so after breakfast we gear ourselves up.  We are told it may get colder several miles out and so we put on heavier clothes and pack everything we might need for half a day out from terra firma.  Our check in time was 1030 and we are there in plenty only to see that our trip is in question because the wind is likely to increase.  We decided to sit around and have a cup of coffee and hope it would go ahead.

It got to 1030 and we were pleased to see that our trip was proceeding but we were being warned that mal de mer may take place!  Being hardy Scillonians we were happy to go along with that.  We were bussed out to the boat and voyaged out into the great wild ocean and our skipper used sonic detectors to find whale activity and he eventually with good lookout chap identified where would be a good chance to find one.  We were thrilled to see the sperm whale blowing and we hovered a reasonable distance from him for several minutes as he took deep breaths and blew several times from his spout, then when he had replenished his air etc his tail rose as he began to dive and we saw the full flume.  The tail disappeared and he would be submerged for about another hour.  I call him him because the water here is too cold for female sperm whales – they stay in the tropics.  On the way we saw petrels, albatrosses and shearwaters too – what a day!!

After that excitement we went to a rock nearer the shore where there was another colony of furry black seals including small pups and we took some more snaps.  It was then time to return to base and make our way back to our base. By the way we did not need any of the heavier clothes we would have been warm enough in shorts and tee-shirts which was is what the boat crew wore but the important thing was we had our cameras.  I videoed the whale on the surface but I have only put up some photos as it lasted several minutes.