Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on those accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime. ~Mark Twain

Thursday 4 February 2010

Cetacean Soup!

Weather has been pretty good for the last few days so have managed to get out on the boat a couple of times and enjoy Kaikoura. Was dropped in South Bay with some friends from Dusky Lodge the other day and we walked back to Kaikoura around the peninsula, enjoying the views and the sunshine.
Had some really good days on the boat too, lots of sperm whales around which is good although sometimes making it tricky to track the same one for consecutive dives. We’ve seen some interesting behaviour too, such as two whales surfacing side by side, a surfacing tail first and today two closely surfacing whales clicking at each other head to head underwater. Also got a glimpse of more orca, saw some tall dorsal fins from a distance so almost definitely males. Whilst returning to South Bay today we encountered a group of dusky dolphins seeming mostly to be mother and calf pairs, including some very small, very cute, young ones!

Dusky dolphins