Long time...

Been quite some time since my last post. In some aspects quite a bit has happened, in others not much. After much hassle, which I won't go into here, living arrangements changed multiple times and I am now no longer working at Dusky Lodge but now living in a flat at the edge of town. A hassle to move about so much but I'm now happily settled for my last month in town.

On the research front not an awful lot has been going on. Since my last post I have done some land watches and two trips on Whale Watch. Once Christoph arrived in mid May we managed to get the boat out once. Myself being the only person currently on the project who knows how it all runs it pretty much fell to me to train up Leila, who came out with Christoph and myself, and explain to Christoph generally how we run the trips. After not being out on the little research boat for a couple of months it was great to be back out and the day went pretty well all in all, with five surfacings recorded.
Unfortunately since then the weather has been pretty awful, with days of almost continuous rain and strong winds off shore. So no research either with the boat or on the hill unfortunately.

The rain finally broke yesterday so I went out for a walk towards the seal colony and took some pictures of the beautiful snow covered mountains. There was some blue sky and even a little sun today so I went for another walk and checked out Fyffe House, home of early European settlers and built on whalebone foundations.

Hopefully the weather will improve enough to get at least a few more research days in before I leave.

Back to it

Leila, a friend from university, was accepted onto the research project for this season and flew into Christchurch on 1st April. I took the bus down to meet her and spend the night in Christchurch. By the time she had arrived and we checked in to the hostel it was early evening, we walked out, through the Botanic Garden, to a shopping mall so I could buy a new pair of shoes then we found a nice little restaurant and had a great curry. The long flight had started to take its toll by then and Leila was pretty tired so we headed back to the hostel for a fairly early night. The following morning after checking out we had a quick peek in the cathedral and then bought tickets to take the gondola up above the city. The weather was good, though there was some cloud hanging over the city, and we enjoyed the views, took a stroll along the top of the hill and had some lunch. We stayed up there until it was time for us to head back to the city and catch the bus to Kaikoura. Leila seems to have settled in to the volunteer house and Kaikoura pretty quickly.

Leila and me on top of the hill by the gondola

I guess I haven’t fully explained the project or how it works. The project is funded, at least partially, by the DOC (NZ Department of Conservation) and was set up by Wendy and Tim Markowtiz and Christoph Richter from NZ and Jonathan Gordon from the University of St Andrews. The overall aim of the project is to assess the impact of the tourist vessels (boats, planes and helicopters) on the sperm whales that use the Kaikoura canyon. This will be done by collecting data from the research boat, and also from land as a control so we have no impact on the whales. There are three PhD candidates involved: Saana (St Andrews Uni) was here for the first field season to collect some acoustic data and has now returned to Scotland to continue working on her thesis. Manuel (Canterbury Uni) will be here for the next few year s to collect data for his PhD and is primarily in charge of data collection from the boat. Ophélie (Canterbury Uni) arrived here sometime in March and will largely be collecting data from the land base. Manuel is not on a fully funded PhD so he needs to earn some money for day to day living. This means he has taken an MMO (marine mammal observer) job in Kenya for about two months. Unfortunately this means that the boat will probably not be going out whilst he is away. I have asked if I can organise to take the boat out as I know how it all runs but I’m not sure whether this will happen. Christoph, one of the project organisers should be coming out sometime in May and the should hopefully be going out when he is here.

Manuel arranged a meeting on the 5th for the new volunteers to go through some of the protocols and so he could meet people before he left for Kenya. On the 8th Leila, Daniel (another new volunteer) and I went up to the land base with Ophélie to be shown the land work. This involves scanning for whales using binoculars and recording surfacings with a theodolite and a video camera as well as inputting data into a program called Logger similar to the work we do on the boat. The weather was pretty good so we had a nice day on the end of the peninsula and saw Kaikoura regular Tiaki surface a few times. Hopefully there will be enough reasonable weather days to keep us occupied with work, and we will continue to go out and collect additional data from the Whale Watch boats whenever we can.

That’s all for now, more updates as things progress.

Surf's up!

March has been fairly quiet with no research, so not all that much to report since the last post. Weather has continued to be reasonable, though with a few more autumnal days creeping in, and a few dustings of snow on the mountains. Had my birthday last week, enjoyed the sun and the hot tub, made some good chocolate brownie cake and enjoyed the company of the good friends I’ve made here in Kaikoura.

Still working in the bakery, and got a few more hours last week so a bit of extra money coming in which is always good. I’ve now been trained to use the till and make coffees and milkshakes, so I can help out the front and am not always stuck in the kitchen washing dishes!

Silke, a former cleaner at the Dusky Lodge, and I decided we wanted to try surfing so we booked ourselves a lesson. Originally meant to go out on Paddy’s day but the weather was pretty awful and Dave, the surf instructor, said we should hold out for the better weather the following day. So after enjoying a good night out in the Strawberry Tree we went out yesterday to a surf spot about 10 minutes north of Kaikoura for a lesson with two others. After getting our wetsuits on and doing a few stretches Dave gave us a quick on land lesson on how to stand up and then we got into the water. Paddling onto the wave is quite tricky so Dave pushed us on to each wave. We rode the first on our bellies just to get a feel for the wave and the speed, then the next one we tried to stand up. Everyone managed to managed to wobble their way to some kind of standing position and we enjoyed around two hours in the water. Paddling out is pretty tiring when you’re not used to it and though we were all exhausted by the end I think we all wanted to do more. It was great fun and definitely something I would like to try again. With so many surfers around Kaikoura hopefully I’ll get a chance to borrow a board and give it another go!

I think that’s all for now, a couple more weeks and we should be getting back into the research, and definitely in to autumn.

Birds eye view

Had a good few days since the last post, despite having to say goodbye to a few people. Saana, one of the PhD student was preparing to leave and had lots to do, so no research over this last week really, though she did run a little workshop for us on using Access.

Bonfire on the beach

Rachael, a cleaner at the Dusky Lodge had her last day in Kaikoura on Thursday. The weather was beautiful so we went down to the beach near South Bay and had a swim, then a BBQ by the pool at Dusky and later in the evening a bonfire on the beach.

Saturday morning I started work at the Pot Belly Bakery in town. Pretty easy work, just washing dishes, wiping tables, sweeping up etc at the moment and I’ll probably gradually get trained on other things. Only four hours on Saturdays and Sundays but it means a bit of extra money coming in which I can hopefully save whilst I’m not paying for my accommodation. Saturday evening was the last night for Saana and one of the volunteers, Gemma, so we had a BBQ up at the volunteer house with lots of food including freshly caught fish courtesy of Manuel, the other PhD student.

Humpback whale and dusky dolphins

Had a strange start to Sunday morning, being woken by a phone call from Manuel telling me there was a tsunami coming (as a result of the Chile earthquake) and just to let me know he had been evacuated from the field station… a little hard to comprehend first thing in the morning after a late night! Anyway, the tsunami didn’t amount to much although no boats went out for the rest of the day. I went to work at the bakery again and afterwards met a couple of friends and headed out to the aero club to see if we could get a flight with Adam, one of the pilots who had offered to take us up for a seriously discounted price. We went up around 2.30pm and the weather was beautiful. We quickly found lots of dusky dolphins and a humpback whale which is the first one I’ve ever seen! We then headed around 18 miles offshore to find sperm whales. We spotted to quite close together at the surface and Adam did some figure eights between them so we could get a good look from both sides of the plane. It was very cool to see them from the air, a different perspective from the boat, and it allows you to see the whole body and get a much better impression of the size of them. We turned back to land after about a half hour flight and on the way Adam did a few sharp banks and, after announcing ‘hold on to your cameras’, a zero g drop which was great fun!

Sperm whale

That’s about it for now, into March already… how time flies!

Catch up

Been a while since my last blog post, sorry. Had a few days in a row where I didn't get out on the boat because of weather or scheduling. Also tried and failed to get on a Whale Watch trip on the 13th, they were fully booked in the morning then the wind picked up in the afternoon and they cancelled some trips. These are the days of cetacean research that can get quite frustrating and require some patience.

Had a good trip out on the boat on the 14th. We tracked the easily recognisable Tiaki (has a very prominent dorsal fin) for a few dives and observed some very loud surface clikcing with easily audible echoes from the canyon walls. 15th no boat again, rained all day, but back out on the 16th and a good trip on the 17th which included a few dusky dolphins and a very fleeting glimpse of one or two beaked whales. They are incredibly shy animals so impossible to get any where near them with the boat.

On the 18th, after a quick job 'interview' at a local bakery, I managed to get a seat on Wawahia, on of the Whale Watch boats and spotted Tiaki, becoming a regular sighting at the moment. Afterwards at the volunteer house I databased the backlog of data collected on the Whale Watch trips over the past few weeks.

Since the 19th we have had beautiful sunshine, getting pretty hot at times. On the 20th, after being offered a weekend job at the bakery I went out on the boat. We had to go quite far offshore to find them and they seemed to be shallow diving as most submerged without showing their tail flukes. In the evening Dusky Lodge was fully booked so there was little point in me sitting on reception. I was allowed the evening off and went to the small local cinema to see The Lovely Bones, which I really enjoyed.

The beach at meatworks

Had an early morning on the boat on the 21st, which was unfortunately cut a little short when a big fog bank started rolling in. In the afternoon Elena, one of the volunteers who left on the 22nd, organised a bit of a picnic/BBQ on the beach at a local surf spot and I enjoyed the sunshine and took some pictures.

Surfers at meatworks

Yesterday we had more great weather so I went out to the end of the peninsula with a few people. We wanted to snorkel with the seals but the swell was up a bit and apparently the viz wasn't too good so we just walked out onto the rocks, explored the rock pools and collected a few paua shells.

More whales!

Have had a couple more days of good weather. Had a beautiful day on the boat on the 5th, tracked a whale for four surfacings including two paired with another animal. We then found a sleepy whale which stayed at the surface for ~40mins, fluked up then breached four times followed by what must have been around 30 lob tails.

The following day was also sunny but we didn't have a skipper for the boat so I went to South Bay for a snorkel with a couple of friends. There was loads of life to see, lots of kelp and algae with small fish amongst it.

The research project has been allowed to have one free seat on a Whale Watch boat each day, so Sunday I went to try and get on a trip. As we don't pay we can only get a seat at the last minute if the trip isn't full, or someone hasn't checked in. I managed to get on the boat Tohora at about 1pm and although the sea was pretty choppy we managed to see four whales. These trips are a good opportunity to collect additional data and photo-ID for the project so it was a good trip. We came back to South Bay via Barney's Rock where there were lots of fur seals, including some pups who appeared to still be learning to swim.

Seals at Barney's Rock

Couldn't get out on the boat yesterday as it had to go for a 200hr engine check but got out today and tracked a couple of whales quite far offshore, including one that had a large scar across the right side of his head possibly from a ship strike of some sort.

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