Dolphin Swimming

One of my top experiences here was to go dolphin swimming in Kaikoura. Kaikoura is famous for its marine life because there is a deep continental shelf quite close to shore. People come here to go whale and dolphin watching. I chose to go swimming with dolphins.They make no guarantee that you will see any dolphins and it could have been called off due to the violent windstorm the night before, but at 5:30 am, we were meeting for an early morning swim. We had safety instructions and put on thick wetsuits to guard against the cold. After a 30 minute boat trip, the captain spotted dolphins and told us to hop in.

Immediately there were dusky dolphins visible. The water is perfectly clear and a pair of doplhins approached from my left and swam to within a meter of me! They circled around and swam past. They are approximtely my height and weight, but curiously enough, they swim much faster than I can. With no effort at all, they would race up, look me in the face, and race off. At times they would just a couple feet away and I could see every crease and scar on them. Other times they would swim well below me to the point I could barely make them out. That was quite amazing as well because I could see their progress better from a distance and because their depth emphasized both how huge the ocean is and how fantastic they are at swimming.

It is hard to estimate how long we were in the water because the time flew by. I didn't notice the cold water at all. We hopped in and out at different spots a few times. I think we went for four swims and were in the water for at least half an hour. During that time I saw many dozens of dolphins. At one point a pod of 20 or 30 swam up from behind me and passed all around me like a logging truck heading uphill. It was great to get that dolphin-eye view of the pod and also to see how quick they are.

One of the fun parts of the experience is that the dolphins are free to come and go. All the birds and bats I catch decidedly do not want to be caught or to have anything to do with me, but the dolphins don't mind us, as long as we play nice. They are not fed or trained or anything. They just like to come and laugh at us.

After the swimming, we followed around a pod of 500 dolphins and watched them jump and splash. They did lots of leaps, full sumersaults, and lots of fancy tail-slapping maneuvers. It was a fantastic display. I didn't have an underwater camera, and it was hard to take pictures of leaping dolphins from a moving boat on a moving sea, but I got a few. It really was as cool as you could possibly imagine.

Posted by Hello