Lagoon Tour

Up once more at red-vented bulbul fart for an all-day tour with a watery theme. Yes, we were going to go swimming, diving, and otherwise interacting with aquatic wildlife of a Mo’orean variety. The hearty man ate a condemned breakfast, then we were ready for pick-up at 8:00am, along with another French couple from Sofitel. We picked up four more along the way – two French and two Aucklanders, who were staying at what appeared to be a pizzeria.

After driving round what seemed to be most of the island, we reached our starting point and boarded the vessel. We were greeted by Charlie, our guide, and captain Kali, of Enjoy Boat Tours. We first headed out of the lagoon to the open ocean, to see some lemon sharks.

Mo’orea is surrounded by an atoll reef, with 12 gaps in it. The gaps are caused by rivers flowing into the sea at that point – coral will only grow in salt water, and the fresh outflow causes gaps in the atoll. We went through one of these, donned flippers, masks and snorkels, and took to the water, which is delightfully warm in these parts, even in the ocean. We looked down and round for sharks. There was a lemon shark and some reef sharks, but I didn’t get to see either. Maybe I needed to dive deeper and down. After swimming for a bit we reboarded and headed to another area outside the reef.

Here we saw a humpback whale with her calf basking at the surface, and she shortly upped tail and dived to the bottom. When they do this, they stay down for around 25 minutes, to have a snooze on the ocean floor. Unfortunately the boat had stopped for this, as there are regulations about how close you can get to a whale (300m), and as we waited for resurfacing, the motion in the ocean had its inevitable effect on me, with a short bout of mal de mer. Once the whale had reappeared (some way off), we headed off at full speed, and I made a just as speedy recovery.

We now headed inside the lagoon, where the water is much calmer, and followed the marked channel to a shallower area with some coral reef. We stopped to watch some spinner dolphins, so-called because they jump out of the water and spin around - which we saw a couple of times. Then took to the water again to look at reef fish in their multiplicity of colours. This was just a short stop, before we continued on to one of the islands in the lagoon, where lunch had been set up for us.

Clearly the chef had got there in advance, as the fire was going and the fish was cooked. We had barbecued tuna, mahi mahi, and chicken. Before we started, however, Charlie and Kali gave us a quick demonstration of how to make poisson cru, using tuna, cucumber, onion, carrot, coconut milk (freshly squeezed by Charlie) and lime juice. We enjoyed our lunch with salad and rice, and pineapple dusted with fresh coconut. On the sand on the beach we saw crabs, both hermit and non-hermit, and in the water, mullet of varying sizes turned up, as well as a stingray and a small  black-tipped reef shark. They appeared almost on cue as the washing-up was started, and fought over the scraps of food. Also circling overhead were grey-backed terns, and Charlie offered up bits of food for them to grab from his fingers, or thrown into the air. Once everything was cleared up, we fully expected a demonstration of how to open a coconut followed by how to tie a lavalava, but neither of these things happened! Instead, we reboarded as there was still much to see and do.

Nicola records a ray saying "OI! Where's me lunch?"

Our first stop in the afternoon was in relatively deep water, but still inside the lagoon. Here, Charlie found and pointed out to us some turtles on the lagoon floor. As we were looking a school of large rays passed beneath us. Charlie eventually located the turtles, and we saw half a dozen or so. After we’d got back on the boat, we spotted two of them coming up to the surface for air. They don’t stay long!

The final call was at the petting zoo. This was an area of the lagoon where the water is chest-deep, and stingrays regularly turn up here to be fed. Some of these were quite large – particularly when the matriarch turned up, but they were allowing themselves to be touched, and indeed approached Charlie eagerly (they know who has the food!). Also circling the area, and sometimes zooming in between us, were black-tipped reef sharks – some of which were much larger than the ones we’d seen so far, around 2 metres of so in length. There were more small coral growths, so there were the inevitable brightly-coloured reef fish, including some parrotfish and a triggerfish.

That was the end of the tour. We had seen wonderful things on a beautiful sunny day, and enjoyed a typical Polynesian feast. We landed back at the dock and took our transport back to the hotel, to wash the salt out of our togs and hair.

 

Whale Watching

The best-laid plans of mice and men aft gang aglay…

One of the attractions of Tonga as a holiday destination is the annual migration of Southern Humpback whales. The females come to Tonga to give birth to, or conceive, the next generation of whales, and do so in the shallow waters of the greater lagoon which surrounds Tongatapu, the main island. Whale watching is organised from most of the holiday destinations. We thought we’d go along, so talked to the resort manager, who booked us in with Deep Blue Diving. “Oh, you’ve got your own rental car” she said, “just show up at the wharf at 8:30”. Later in the day, however, one of the other staff told us “No, don’t worry about that, they’ll send a taxi to collect you and take you there. Just be outside here at 7:50. There’s some other people going too so we’ll start breakfast early for you as well.”

Easy enough, so we set the alarm (who sets alarms on holiday? Bah! 😉) and had breakfast at 7:00. We were back at reception and waiting for our taxi. One turned up, and the other three piled in. “No worries, there’s another on it’s way for us” we told them as they sped off.

As I said, the best-laid plans…

The manager arrived at 8 o’clock, and was, unsurprisingly, surprised to see us still waiting. After a quick exchange of phone calls, we decided to drive ourselves in and make craven apologies for holding everyone up.

We needn’t have worried. By the time we got there, two things became apparent: the registration and payment procedures were still under way, and we were woefully ill-equipped. We paid for our trip, but then decided, on reflection, it would be better if we equipped ourselves properly. So we decided to go the next day.

On Saturday, then, we repeated the process, with rather better results. Turned up on time, met the crew, and set out for a day's whale-watching. Most of the participants were actually equipped for whale-swimming, which I had understood to be with scuba gear, from the look of all their promotional material, but turned out to be with snorkels. I was a little apprehensive as my previous experience of whale-watching, at Kaikoura, turned out mostly to be watching the bottom of a snack sack. But the water in the lagoon was much calmer, and before long we’d spotted a pod, and come up as close as allowed to them.

After some observation it turned out that the group was a mother and juvenile, and another male who was trying to get frisky with the female. She wasn’t having a bar of it, though, and so the group was moving around quite a bit. Although the snorkellers put out to sea a couple of times, it took a while for them to be satisfied with their sighting. We spent a bit more time searching for, and finding, solo whales, before a call came from another boat – mother and baby, in shallow water, not moving. Pretty much the rest of the afternoon was spent with this couple, as they were very obliging. Tonga, like New Zealand, has laws about minimum safe distances to be kept from whales, but apparently this message hadn’t got through to these two, as the baby in particular kept coming up to have a look at what these crazy humans were doing. The dive groups (there were five on our boat) went out for a second round, and then a third. Eventually, though, the whales tired of us and moved out to deeper water, and the skipper turned the boat around and headed back to dock.

All in all, we had a pretty productive day watching whales. When we met up with the group who’d gone out the day before, it turned out that we’d had much better sightings than they’d had, so delaying by a day was a win for us. One of the crew was a professional underwater photographer, so we decided that we’d buy his package of photos from the day for TOP 60 to augment my surface-view pics.

Mammalian Predators

At Zealandia, there is a predator-proof fence, designed to keep mammalian predators out. These include obvious targets like mustelids (weasels, stoats and ferrets), cats, rats and mice; and also less obvious introduced mammals such as hedgehogs, rabbits and hares, which may not be thought of as dangerous to native fauna, but may destroy eggs, or, crucially, out-compete natives for food resources.

But there is another class of mammalian predator which has been seen more and more frequently around Wellington…and this is one that we’re more than happy to welcome. They’re aquatic predators, and fall into two groups: cetaceans (whales and dolphins) and pinnipeds (seals and sealions).

Fur seal

In recent times we’ve had the visit by Matariki, the Wellington whale – a Southern Right whale who delighted us all in July last year. A pod of bottlenose dolphins was seen in Evans Bay in January. And this month, three orca, believed to be a mother, juvenile and baby came into the harbour near Eastbourne, then crossed over and were spotted very close to the shore at Karaka Bay and Scorching Bay.

Orca came in close to the shore

Orca have a distinctive dorsal fin

Whilst fur seals colonise the Red Rocks each year between May and October, some individuals have been spotted away from their colony. In particular, one individual has been sunning itself on the rocks of Karaka Bay and Breaker Bay since May this year. More recently, a leopard seal was seen in Oriental Bay, and a juvenile individual has been relaxing on the sands at Owhiro Bay for the last two days.  

Don't get too close to those teeth

Leopard seals are apex predators.

Kaikoura

We bunked off work early to get home and to the airport for a 6:30pm flight on Sounds Air over to Blenheim, then collected our hire car and drove the 128km down to Kaikoura. The first part of this drive is fairly average, but when we reached the coast there were spectacular views out over the sea. We’ve just had a bit of a blow here, so there were some big breakers rolling in…with a scattering of surfers in amongst them on some of the beaches.

We found the motel with no problems and met up with Julian, who’d taken the scenic (i.e. slower) route via the Interislander ferry and bus to get here. He’d set off at 9:00am and arrived mid-afternoon, so was able to check in to the hotel for us and explore the environs. This doesn’t take long as Kaikoura isn’t a big place.

When we arrived we were pretty famished, so unpacked quickly and headed into the CBD. The first pub that we came to had closed its kitchen (it was, after all, past 9 o’clock!), but we walked a little further down and found a pizza place called Passione – a bit better than Pizza Hut, I hasten to add – and they were happy to serve us with pizza, pasta, beer and wine. We then headed back to watch England play Australia in an ODI – at one point it looked like England might actually win a cricket match in Australia, but the Aussies had a different idea about that and they managed to complete the run chase with three balls and one wicket to spare.

 Next day we were up with the lark to go into town and get ourselves a good breakfast, as we were booked on the 10:30 whale watch departure. We trundled along to the Kaikoura Whale Watch centre, based at the Whaleway Station on Whaleway Road (yes, really!) only to be informed that the sea was too rough, with 5m swells, and that the tours this morning were cancelled. We were offered a refund or rebooking, so decided to rebook for the next day, Sunday, at 9:30.

This left us at a bit of a loose end for the rest of the day, so we decided to drive up the coast and walk around the peninsula. There is a car park at the beginning of the north end of the walkway, so we parked there. There is a seal colony here, and we spotted several lounging about on the rocks. We then went up a steep path to reach the top of the cliffs, and look around:

We walked along the cliff tops, seeing various wildlife including the ubiquitous red-billed seagulls, and some wax-eyes and a yellowhammer:

From the cliff tops we could see people walking down along the shoreline, and decided that we would see if we could do that from the southern end of the walkway after lunch.

We again parked at the southern end of the walkway and took the track along the coast. Fairly soon it started going uphill to the top of the cliffs, so we abandoned the beaten track and took to the shoreline to explore. The rock formations here are weathered limestone and form some spectacular arrangements as they have been bent out of shape and eroded. The birdlife seems unfazed by the surrounding geography.

In the evening we went out for dinner at The Green Dolphin restaurant, where we had fish and lamb. I was going to order the crayfish, the local speciality – Kaikoura means food/eat (kai) crayfish (koura) – but decided I’d get that tomorrow, as we would be heading past some famous eateries on the way back to Bleinheim.