Day 9 – Kaikoura – Dolphins

This day by far exceeded all my expectations. We came to Kaikoura to swim with Wild Dusky Dolphins off the coast. It is the largest population of these species of dolphins in the world. The only available time slot left open was this morning at 5:30am!!! Eegads, it’s still dark outside at that time. Matt elected not to swim and opted to “watch” from the boat and take photographs. Once I got my wetsuit on, we had a quick educational video and then it was off to the boat.

On the way out to find the pods, sunrise began. It was spectacular. Then, all of a sudden, the boat was surrounded by dolphins and I slid off the back of the boat into the water. It was Freakin’ Cold!!!! Everyone took in big gasps of air since the cold water almost knocks the wind out of you. I have to say that swimming with dolphins at sunrise in New Zealand is among my Top 5 coolest things I’ve done. The dolphins were about 5ft long and sooooo curious. All they wanted to do was play and chase us around in circles. Then they would jump out of the water and splash us. They would get so close that a few times I thought they were going to bonk into my mask. They also like to be sung to in high-pitched sounds, so our “singing and chirping” was the entertainment for both the dolphins and those left on boat. At times, I’d have 2 or 3 playing with me and then a pod of 20-40 would join the fun. I was literally surrounded by them. The wetsuits were really buoyant so it took a lot of effort to dive down with them. But when I could get down, it really caught their attention and 4-5 would float back up to the surface with me. We swam with them for just under an hour. I was exhausted afterwards. Playing with them was like non-stop water aerobics. They were so beautiful and agile.

Once back on board, the boat came onto a huge pod of dolphins that were estimated to be at 3,000!!! They were leaping in front of the boat, riding the wake and skimming along the surface. The Dusky dolphin is considered to be one of the best acrobats and they lived up to their reputation. They really were having a fun time too. Here’s an interesting dolphin fact:

Dolphins are very promiscuous and the female is known to have 5 different partners within 20 minutes. They are also the only animal, other than man, that has sex for pleasure only. Some of the dolphins had nasty scars. The scars aren’t from predators, but from other dolphins who get too fisky.