Whales, dolphins and penguins

…any attempt at wildlife photography depends on a certain amount of luck, first of all to see the animal in question. And then to cope with the challenge of capturing the perfect shot, from a distance, before the animal moves and at the same time dealing with any other constraints the environment presents, such as a moving boat on a choppy sea.

So, I was lucky enough to see (at least part of) a sperm whale from the boat in Kaikoura …. One of the few places on earth where deep underwater ocean valleys come close to meeting the coastline. After an hour or so at sea, including the use of some not very high- tech looking large underwater listening trumpets, the boat crew located a whale.
This is him near the surface. As you can see these are the photos before I’ve had time to straighten them out in photoshop …

And then very shortly afterwards, this is a view of his tail as he dived down to the depths again …

And very quickly our whale encounter was over. We were told that generally whales tend to stay underwater for around 45 minutes at a time before surfacing for air, so we wouldn’t have another chance to see him.

However this left us with time on our boat trip to head for an area of the bay where a pod of dolphins are often found, and sure enough, they were there – and in a much more sociable mood, swimming up to investigate the boat, leaping and twisting, almost showing off for us. Any disappointment at the brevity of the whale sighting was mitigated by the enjoyment of the playful dusky dolphins.

Back with Simon and Dulcie near Christchurch we got the chance to see New Zealand’s local dolphin – the Hector’s dolphin – at Akaroa on the Banks Peninsula, as well as fur seals and cormorants.

Penguins proved more difficult … The little blue penguin is very shy and despite hanging around the beach at dusk I didn’t get to see any … In fact my total penguin count was a very measly two, seen first thing in the morning heading out to sea.

Finally on the North Island I saw my third type of dolphin during a sailing trip in the Bay of Islands.

These were bottlenose dolphins and again they were keen to investigate the boat, as well as showing off with some spectacular jumps, which of course I missed capturing on film! Guess I won’t be moving into wildlife photography as a career any time soon ….