Whales

Took a ferry to the South Island of NZ to spend the last weeks here. One popular thing you can do here is a whale safari - and that's what I did in Kaikoura. Kaikoura is a good place to go whale watching since there are deep waters right close to the coast: According to the presentation they gave on the ship, the "underwater canon" of Kaikoura is 16 000 m deep! That is enough for huge whales like the sperm whale to come pretty close to the shoreline in search of food. Kaikoura is an old whaling station which now has turned into a major tourist attraction.

Whale watching is one of the most popular tourist activities here in NZ. The whale watching company had several vessels - and on our vessel were nearly 50 persons.They go out about every hour to find whales.

Sperm whales can stay under water foraging for about 60 minutes until they run out of oxygen and need to surface. When doing that, they stay at the surface for about 10-15 minutes for re-oxygenating blowing up fountains of water. When they have "stored" enough oxygen again, they dive back into the deepness of the ocean.

It was really amazing to see the huge whale which was about the same size then our ship. Amazing also to see all those tourists around: There were two vessels with about 50 passengers, a private fishing boat and a helicopter watching this one whale surfacing. Seems to be a good business! Maybe even better than whale hunting was in earlier times??

During the same trip it was also possible to watch dolphins playing and some albatrosses flying.