Dolphin trip and back to Christchurch

The reason plans had to change! We were booked for a dolphin swim on Thursday, however no-one else was, so it was not happening.

You go out on a small boat, and hopefully find some dolphins in their natural habitat to then go and swim with. They also run a similar tour in Kaikoura, however on a little research this one seemed more dolphin friendly.

Swiming with them is natural as they are social and inquisitive as long as you stay still and let them come to you.

You are told to use the nearby public toilets before climbing into a wetsuit. Well, that was the most interesting toilet experience!

As you go in, you have a voiceover re the locking and are told you have a maximum of 10 minutes. There will be an alarm at 9. Then you have piano music playing. The flush is automatic. Each time you use the tap, the toilet flushes!

There are three types of dolphin in the sounds that you can swim with. Bottlenose, dusky and common (which are actually few and far between!). There are also hector’s dolphins which are protected, so you are not allowed.

We were all given binoculars. Paul, the driver, owned the company and seemed to have a very nature based ethics.

On the way out, we passed a salmon farm being moved. There were 400,000 salmon in 12 pods. For a salmon farm, the water needs to be deeper than 100m for the waste to efficiently disperse. These guys were doing it in less and causing a problem. If they had devised a way to collect and make a use of the product, this could have been of use in the future, but instead, they moved it.

The first spot were some hector’s dolphins who were so friendly. They came and checked us out and then swam around the boat for a good 20 minutes with many of them playing and doing jumps and flips a little further from the boat. They are very small at about 1.5m and they have a rounded fin.

He said they were a subspecies of which there are only 35 in the world. We saw 21 so over half the world’s population!

They are often seen in this bay. They are currently designing bouys to detect the dolphins and will enable tonnes more research and knowledge in order to increase their numbers.

We then saw a couple of blue penguins swimming. How cute! They stay in pairs for their lives. They stayed with us swimming in front of the boat for about 5 minutes and then dived together.

A little lost on us, but a type of cormorant of which there are only 700 in the world.

I then spotted something. He whammed the breaks on to see a seal thrashing and eating an octopus. A very rare sight and very interesting to watch. Real nature!

Unfortunately, there were no big dolphins so no swimming with them. Now added to that list when we come back. Someone had said they were in Kaikoura! We did though stop for a brief snorkel as we had wetsuits on.

On returning to the docks, they spotted a white heron, apparently extremely rare.

Time to head south!

On passing Kaikoura later that day, we did see the dusky dolphins jumping near a boat. Probably the whale tour we did a while back.

We are back at the same hotel that we shared 3 weeks ago with Del Amitri.

Mr MacIntyre himself is at the Arena on Tuesday, but that is some way out and a few days off, so not expecting to find him in the bar tonight. We do however have some people from SailGP.

It’s mega windy here too. Do they bring the wind with them like you get fake snow for skiing?

Looks like they have stepped up security…… in a fools and horses kinda way!