Whale Watch Kaikoura I

We finally managed to do a whale watch tour in Kaikoura. We spent roughly two hours on the boat cruising around in trying to locate whales. The first animals we saw were albatross. They're pretty impressive to see flying around as they're rather large birds with a wingspan of up to 3.5 m. After a while we were told by the crew that they spotted a whale nearby. 🐋
We were lucky enough to see a sperm whale. Sperm whales dive quite deep (up to 2.25km) and long for feeding. They can hold their breath for up to 2 hours. After that they come back to the surface for 10-15 minutes to refill their oxygen stores. That's when we saw the whale. The most impressive part was when he was diving back down and we saw his flukes (we've got it on video). This whale was a male named Aoraki, the crew can distinguish the different whales by patterns on their skin or by their flukes. Sperm whales average 16 m in length but some may reach 20 m, with the head representing up to one-third of the animal's length. They weigh up to 80 tonnes.Read more