Here's one of some of the white white rocks on the beach here in Kaikoura.These below are of a couple yellow-eyed penguins on the rocks at Curio Bay, and the bluffs at South Bay in Kaikoura with a couple of shags resting.
Thursday 6 December here (Weds in America) and after our dolphin swim day of warm sunshine and no wind it’s 14 degrees (57 F) and gray, with a cold wind from the south. Can’t even see the coastline across the bay where yesterday we could see the snow-capped mountains. The weather is so changeable. In five weeks we have had one period of settled sunny weather, three days long. Several periods of settled rain, however, including on the east coast of the South Island here, which is normally sunnier than most other places, at least that’s what they claim! I’ll try to get some of this stuff up on the blog today, take the laptop to an internet place in town. We have one week left in the country.
Dolphin swimming! I’m so glad we did it. The dusky dolphins here are playful and so acrobatic—we saw one do a series of five or six complete somersaults about 6 feet in the air, landing on his/her back after each one, then after about 3 seconds back in the air for another. Amazing. The dolphins are still pretty far out in the ocean this time of year—took us about 40 minutes to reach them, at 20 knots. The water was cooolllld but they supply great wetsuits, really thick ones, complete with hoods. Thirteen people swimming from the boat. There were hundreds and hundreds of dolphins. Once we were in the water they just swam all around us, jumping in the air, circling us in the water (they suggest trying to swim in a circle with the dolphins, but they are way too fast). The instruction is to be interesting, do funny things, to get the dolphins’ interest. Diving is supposed to really interest them, but it was impossible to get under the water with the wetsuit on. Constantly dolphins would swim up right under me or pass me by on one side or the other about three inches away, looking curiously at me. It was a pure delight. You are instructed not to try to touch them, to keep your hands at your sides—and to make funny noises, which really seemed to bring them closer. I sang to them (through my snorkel). The boat followed different pods and we got in the water for swims six different times, each time for 5-10 minutes. The last time I just stayed on the boat and watched, which was as amazing as being in the water with them. They were so playful, so fast, so graceful. We saw lots of babies, about two feet long. Adults are about 5 feet long, quite small. Some might have been 6 feet.
There were big swells, really big ones, and half the people on the boat got seasick, including John, who had taken some medication which didn’t seem to help. Lots of buckets going round. The crew were totally nonplussed, they are so used to it. When we were checking in they told us it was a moderate to severe seasickness day, because of the swell, but we decided to go for it anyway. John is glad he went, too, even with the sickness. It was a great afternoon. In summer I understand the dolphins move much closer to shore where the water is more sheltered (probably to get away from orca, their only predator aside from Japanese and Chilean fisherman), so seasickness is not as much an issue.
We also saw albatross flying for the first time from the boat. Oh my, what a gift that was. They look like giant gliders—such long wings in relation to their bodies. The longest wingspan of any sea bird—up to ten feet. We had visited the Royal Albatross colony/preserve on the Otago Peninsula near Dunedin, but the birds were on the nests there, and we didn’t get to see them fly. Yesterday we saw two kinds—the wandering albatross, biggest of them all, and another with a darker body—is it the sooty, I forget? (Got to learn those seabirds now.) Several times one followed the boat for many minutes, staying close to the water surface, almost touching it with its wings (the way pelicans do in California), and flying back and forth across the wake in a zig-zag that is characteristic of them. We learned at the preserve that they do it to use the energy generated by centrifugal force in one turn to give them speed into the next turn—sort of like skiing or rollerskating. They were reminiscent of sailboats tacking, though much faster! They fly for days at a time and flapping their long long wings very much would exhaust them. Gliding in this zig zag way they are able to conserve energy. I couldn’t take my eyes off them.
When the young royal albatross leaves the nest at about nine months of age, it doesn’t touch land again for about 4-5 years. Years! Our guide at the preserve said one young bird from there (all the birds there are banded) didn’t return for 8 years. And unless they are on their breeding grounds, albatross do not touch land. Years in the air and on the water. The young ones that come back after all those years can hardly stand up, their legs are so weak. That’s why albatrosses have that funny gait that led them to be called “goony birds” by the American sailors in WWII. All species of albatross mate for life. The oldest royal recorded at the preserve was 62 when she died--they called her “grandma”. She had a fertile egg at 56. That species doesn’t start to breed until they are 12 or older—they spend time with other “teenagers” hanging around during the breeding season for a bit, then go off to fly and eat for another year. They spend a lot of time checking out possible mates during those years. All the birds are solitary outside the breeding season, but they usually arrive back at their nesting site within hours of each other. And they always nest in the same colony they were born in, often trying to build their first nest right in the spot they were hatched (it’s the male who builds the nest, but the female has absolute veto and often rejects it and starts another one a few inches away). The colony on the Otago peninsula is the only place in the world where albatross breed on a mainland, and as a result they are studied and managed intensely. They don’t seem to mind. Since they have no predators, they are very easy for the naturalists to work with. They allow the staff to reach under them as they are sitting and pick up their eggs and weigh them, to weigh their new chicks, etc. The colony consists of about 150 breeding pairs—the first pair arrived in the 1930’s, and it wasn’t too long before the local people and the conservation establishment began to protect them from the introduced predators—ferrets and stoats and even rabbits, whose tunneling undermines the steep grassy areas where the birds nest. The rest of this species breeds in the Chatham Islands.
Most species of albatross are under threat, and the biggest threat to many is longline and trawl fishing. The lines are so long the birds don’t associate the boat with the bait they see flashing through the water, and when they dive for the bait they get hooked and dragged and drowned. There is a movement to change the way longlines are set to help prevent this (once the bait has sunk it’s not a danger, since albatross hunt by sight), with lots of strategies fisherman can use to minimize the risk. That would mean cooperation by many nations that fish the entire Pacific. It’s not something a lot of people seem to be aware of, but if something isn’t done quite soon, many species of this bird WILL be extinct within the near future, including the huge wandering albatross, which flies up to 25,000 miles every year of its long life. Coincidentally there is an essay by Gary Snyder (hero) in November’s Shambala Sun about writers and nature in which he talks about this albatross. There are some great photos of the bird. Lots of good stuff in that issue, as a matter of fact!
Random observations--
Something that no one mentioned to us before we came was how different it feels to be in a place where there are no large mammals except domestic animals and people. There’s a lack of wild mammals and reptiles in general--walking through a forest, no snakes, no lizards, no bear, coyote, bobcat, fox, raccoon, skunk, badger, beaver, squirrel. No turtles or tortoises. No gophers or moles. No antelope, elk, moose. If you see something dead on the road, it is usually a bird or a possum or a rabbit, possibly a stoat—except for the birds, all introduced animals, not natives. So many times I have seen something, a large shape, in a field, and immediately I’m reflexively on the lookout for some large mammal. Then I remember—oh no, not here. Or I’m walking in the rainforest, and it’s all wet and slithery, and snakes come to mind, watchfulness—but there are no snakes. In the forest, there is always birdsong, and that is pretty much it, except for the sound of wind or rain. No scrabbling of little feet in the underbrush (never have heard birds making scratching noises on the ground in the forest, though I understand there are some ground feeders), no insect sounds, no lizards darting. There are bees and wasps where there are flowers or sooty mold on the trees, but not the kinds of insect sounds that are so common in the northern hemisphere—cicadas or beetles or crickets or grasshoppers or different sorts of flies buzzing. (Saw my first grasshopper two days ago on our cliff walk here in Kaikoura.) There seem to be many fewer flying insects—or else the ones that are here are very quiet. Not many screens on windows except where there are sandflies or mosquitoes. It feels very alive in the forests, but in a different way than what I am used to. Lots more plant life of all kinds, much less animal life. Undoubtedly there are worms and other invertebrates helping to break down the dead forest stuff, but I haven’t seen them. My little guide has photos of some gnarly looking insects and arthropods, but I haven’t seen any of them. Flies and ants and moths, that’s about it. And spiders (nothing scary like in Oz).
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