Kaikoura Whale Watching

As anyone who's been to there will tell you, there's one reason above all others to visit Kaikoura: whales. Kaikoura sits on a peninsula jutting out of NZ's Eastern coastline into the Pacific Ocean, and happens to be abundant in marine life. The name comes from a Maori legend; Kai means food, and koura is the Maori name for crayfish. On the peninsula's southern side is a very deep oceanic trench, known as the Kaikoura Canyon. It's here that male sperm whales come to feed on their staple diet of giant squid.

You can see the whales from the air if you like (and your budget permits) by plane or helicopter. You can get closer though, and for longer, by going out on a boat. The downside of this is that you're at the mercy of sea conditions, and on the day we arrived in Kaikoura all the trips were cancelled. We couldn't miss this, so we hung around and hoped that the next day the sea would be calmer.

The following morning, the sea was definitely calmer, but by no means calm, with a 2m swell (I'm told this is a lot). Mercifully there wasn't much of a wind, so it was deemed safe enough and only a 'regular' motion sickness warning was issued to passengers. I don't generally get seasick, but Rach was pretty nervous about this!

To locate the whales, the captain places a special underwater microphone over the edge of the boat and listens for the ultrasonic clicks of the whales echo-locating their prey. When they do emerge, they sit up on the surface oxygenating their blood for 10 minutes or so before diving back down. They can reach a depth of up to 3,000m and stay down for up to 45 minutes, which gives the whale-watchers plenty of time to observe the rich bird life: cape petrels, shearwaters and wandering albatrosses (see photo).

To top it off, the rather uniquely beautiful setting of Kaikoura makes the perfect whale-watching backdrop - one of the few places where snow-capped alpine peaks slope straight down to the ocean.

Rob