Moko passed away earlier this year and when Blaise read that he mentioned that it would be cool to swim with dolphins. Now Blaise is not a swimmer, he can swim, very well in fact but hanging in the water is not his cup of tea. I on the other hand love being in the water and couldn't pass up this opportunity. A quick google search had brought up Tauranga as the place to go for swimming with wild dolphins so on December 23rd we had a date on a boat to go out to look for dolphins.
We arrived, grabbed a set of fins (we had our own masks and wetsuits) and scurried aboard. The boat headed out through the marina heading to the other side of the harbor to pick up the rest of our passengers. It was a large luxurious boat with lots of space and cabin area. The crew was made up of Stewart, the skipper, and 5 marine biologists. The goal was to get out of the harbor, find a pod and dive in. This boat had a high success rate, they found pods 90% of the time and swam with them 75% of the time. We had high hopes.
It was the first nice day in almost a week and the whole crew was looking forward to getting back out on the water. We left the harbor and almost as soon as we got out of the entrance we encountered a maternity pod off common dolphins (they are smaller dolphins, maybe 2/3 the size of a bottlenose dolphin). It was quite large almost 30 animals and lots of newborns and babies. They were freaking adorable. Skipper Stewart explained that the babies keep up with the pod in a clever way. They hang out just behind their mother's fin and the slipstream coming off of it pulls the baby along. Stewart encouraged us to whoot and cheer and clap as it tends to make them come along and stay close to the ship. He was right, they played in and around us for over 30 minutes.
Department of Conservation (DOC) forbids swimming with pods with babies so we would have to go out to find another pod. Finally the boat headed out to sea and we all felt really lucky to have seen dolphins so early. The crew was great, they gave us a nice continental breakfast and spent the morning bringing us hot drinks. All very knowledgeable and talkative including Shannon, a young Canadian marine biologist.
The hours passed and there was no dolphins. We saw a fish work up which was pretty neat. Imagine an inverted pyramid with the huge base on the surface and the tip down in the ocean. It is full of swim swimming frantically on the surface, it looks like the water is boiling. And of course there is a tonne of birds there feeding off the little fish. Skipper Stewart and crew kept heading towards them because they are a sign of something feeding off the fish school and often are dolphin pods. Sadly there was no dolphins. We continued to circle the waters but nothing :(
Blaise saw a hammerhead shark come to the surface and much to his delight it was confirmed by a couple of the marine biologists so he felt pretty stoked about that.
Finally after about 4 hours the crew apologized and headed for home. They wondered if the storm of the last 3 days had forced the pods farther out to sea and they hadn't worked back in yet. We were all pretty disappointed, especially after that awesome morning start. Well you can't force nature. We headed back into the harbor, were offered another go out at half price (which we might take up in the future) and headed off to find wind for Blaise.
postscript: later that afternoon we found out that a shark (not a hammerhead) had attacked a snorkeller in the water at one of the beaches in town. he fended it off with his knife and minimal injuries but they shut all the beaches down in the Tauranga area. I'm kind of wondering if the dolphins knew something we didn't.
No comments:
Post a Comment