Whales and Dolphins and Birds! On My!

We went one a whale and dolphin cruise a few weeks ago.  Those of you that know me pretty well are aware that being on a boat that is moving fast through the water is not usually my cup of tea.  I made sure I had taken a sea sick pill before we started. I admit, it was an amazing afternoon.  I have learned that being in the front of the boat in the breeze is the best way for me to enjoy such an activity so we went right to the front and sat on a step and watched the land go by as we left the harbor.

We were told that we needed to look for large flocks of circling birds.  Finally we saw some.  Many of the birds were gannets.  You can read about them back many months on this blog.  They fly here to NZ to mate and lay their eggs and then when the chicks are big enough they fly back to Australia...just 1400 km.  On this excursion I figured out how they would do that.  They are like ducks in that they can float on the water and they drive into the waters to spear fish with their beaks.

Here is the first flock of birds that we found.  They were so awesome to watch.

This photo is of a gannet dive-bombing into the ocean.  They hit the water going up to 100 km per hour. I guess it is a good thing that they do not have nostrils on the outside of their beaks or they would drowned from the impact. 

Not too long after we saw these birds doing their tricks than the captain came on the air and said that he had been told there were dolphins about 10 minutes away from us. We took off like lightening.  Then he came on again and told us that we were in store for a real treat as we were approaching a super-pod of dolphins!  That meant between 1000 and 2000 of them.

Can you see them jumping?

Here two, up close and personal, are right under the front of the boat.  The captain said that they like to swim by or near or under the boat...it is like a racer drafting behind the others. 

Here is another one.  I probably took 200 photos of them and these are the best I got.  They gave us a CD with all sorts of photos that they had taken but I wanted to use only mine. 

This last one is of more fish but if you look to the left side of the photo you and see the water spout of a whale. 

These next two photos are ones that they gave us. My camera, as good as it is, could not capture them.  They knew what they were looking for and what was happening so they got really good shots.

These were not even taken when we were there but they are from the waters here about!  Top one is an orca and the bottom a humpback.