Our first ecology course of the semester found students and staff eagerly following our professor, Laurie Furlong of Northeastern University (Iowa), as she led the way through tidal pools and other shore habitats commenting on gastropods and cetaceans along the way. They were able to examine sea stars and traveling anemones as well as a small octopus and a host of other sea creatures. When the sun rose on Wednesday morning students and staff were already gearing up for their Dolphin Encounter” tour. Most of the students chose to swim with the dolphins (which is pretty sweet, it’s not every day that you get to swim with wild dolphins out in the middle of the ocean). The whole crew looked pretty great in their matching wetsuits and snorkel gear.
There is a deep-sea trench right off the Kaikoura coast, which means that there is TONS of sea life here including whales, dolphins, seals, and lots of sea birds. On our tour we got the chance to see Dusky dolphins, they would play in the waves at the bow of our boat and would turn summersaults and jumps out of the water. Apparently the dusky dolphin is one of the most playful dolphins in the world and only lives in the Southern hemisphere. We also saw albatrosses (14 of the 22 species in the world can be found in Kaikoura), as well as a whole flock of Huttons shearwaters, a rare sea bird that nests in high alpine environments.
You’ll all be glad to hear that everyone avoided seasickness thanks to motion sickness medication and ginger biscuits.
One evening during the week we were also able to see Little Blue Penguins, the world’s smallest penguin. Around 7-9 PM the whole group of students, professor and SLCs all went down to the Kaikoura coast guard headquarters to see the penguins that nest in the open basement of the building. According to locals the penguins can get quite noisy at times, especially during coastguard meetings.
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