Whale watch

Marita3
Mark & Helen Syrett
Sat 20 Dec 2014 06:57
42: 23.598S 173: 40.687 E
Friday 19 December
We left the Puhi Puhi campsite and drove into Kaikoura expecting to find a touristy resort. In fact this a really nice place with a lot of backpackers and tourists (like us!) with a nice town (large village) and the natives are extremely friendly with lots to do. As it was a cloudless sunny day we stopped at the Whale watching office to see what it was all about and as it was such a perfect day we booked ourselves on the 1100 boat. We went and found a campsite and sorted out the Mighty and were back at the office by 1030 for our briefing. 48 of us were then transported by coach to the other side of the peninsular where we embarked one of their fleet of five special catamarans.
We arrived at the whale grounds within about 15 minutes. This is the Kaikoura Canyon, 5 km wide and over 1,600 metres deep with a 1,000 metre vertical drop off. It is here that the warm currents flowing down from the tropics collide with the nutrient-rich cold currents flowing up from the Antarctic. This creates a food chain for all the fish from small to large. Unusually, but luckily for us a whale was soon sighted
The cameras were soon clicking— no doubt some ( probably Henry) will think that it is a pity that there is nothing else in the photo to give relative size. However a male sperm whale grows to about 15 to 20 metres and weighs about 40 to 60 tonnes with the female being about 30% to 40% smaller. they live for about 70 years. Fortunately they are no longer hunted other than by the Japanese. They feed on Groper, Ling, Tuna, Black Shark, King Fish but they prefer Squid, especially Giant Squid.
It soon started to slip before the water—it was going to dive. Its back arched up
and then its tailed flipped and it disappeared to the depths below
An amazing and wonderful sight and although we had seen whales off Australia and Lisbon we had never seen one dive like this.
We saw 4 whales in all in our two and half hour trip, a large pod of dolphins, gulls, seals and an albatross.
When there was a lull in activity the skipper listened over the side of the boat with an acoustic ‘ear trumpet’ (Mark could do with one of these!) 
and at one stage shouted “there’s one on the way up" and sure enough a few minutes later a whale appeared on the surface about a quarter of a mile away, and off we sped to watch it lie on the surface and then dive.
A wonderful day and a great experience.