Dolphin Encounter Update March 2010
16/04/10
Welcome to the Dolphin Encounter® update for March 2010.
The beginning of March signified the official start of autumn and our autumnal weather has certainly been varied. We have experienced beautiful sunny days, but have had a few southerly fronts come through to keep us on our toes. We even had some very light coverings of snow on the Seaward Kaikoura Mountains to add to the vista.
One very memorable weather change occurred on our afternoon tour in early March when ominous black clouds slowly came in from offshore. As our boats were returning from the afternoon tour some loud claps of thunder signalled the arrival of what turned out ot be a huge hailstorm. The hail was the largest any of the locals, including our skippers had ever seen and the storm was driven by winds recorded at 115km/hr. The temperature dropped 11°C in 35minutes to a very chilly 5°C. The heavy hail meant the skippers had extremely limited visibility in negotiating their way home until conditions improved as they neared the harbour.
Our check-in times have been constantly changing throughout the month as the mornings grow darker due to the extension of daylight saving. The advantage of a later check-in resulted in some outstanding sunrises and with the full moon we had the sceanrio of a beautiful sunrise with the full moon sinking in the west, quite incredible. Add to this the spectacle of a pod of dusky dolphins coming in from offshore to the inshore waters.
The dolphin’s locations have varied greatly ranging from areas nearby such as the Punchbowl and heading as far south as the Mikenui and the Conway. Travel times have differed from as little as 10 minutes to as long as 50 minutes.
The water temperature reached a tropical 18°C and some enthusiastic swimmers enjoyed discarding their wetsuit jackets enabling them to dive deeper. Most people however opted to swim without a hood allowing them to hear the duskies audible echolocation system.
Our diverse marine life still continues to keeps us entertained with sightings this month including our young humpback whale that remained in the area until the middle of the month. With such an abundance of food from huge plankton blooms, it’s no surprise that this humpback took advantage of such a rich food supply and he was frequently sighted lunge-feeding amongst the duskies. The dolphins appeared to have tremendous fun racing around the mouth of the humpback ducking out of the way at the last minute as he inhaled huge quantities of water teeming with plankton. As well as keeping crew and passengers entertained, even the local fishermen enjoyed his exploits as he frequently breached, sometimes up to 8 times in close proximity to them.
The numbers of common dolphins has slowly been increasing throughout the month obviously enjoying the warmer waters and have been sighted bow-riding our boats. It appears to be their favourite option to play with the boat rather than swimmers; maybe we’re just too slow in the water to entertain them?!
Some of our swimmers had a real treat encountering a bizarre sunfish which had surfaced amongst the dolphins. The sunfish is the world’s largest bony fish and can reach up to 3m long. We’ve also encountered numbers of blue penguins who are normally quite shy, however on occasion we’ve been able to get a close look at the world’s smallest penguin.
Till next time…………
Translation in Japanese