Photo of the week – dolphin sunrise
Kaikoura on the east coast of New Zealand’s south island is one of the best places in the world to see dolphins and whales. Both visit the coast line year round which has led to Kaikoura becoming a popular place to go on whale and dolphin watching trips as well as swimming with the dolphins. At 6am it was pretty damn cold and still pitch black, but the three of us knew that it would be worth it. We set sail as the sun began to rise and we were soon joined by scores of dusky dolphins. I was amazed by how many there were. They swam alongside the boat, leaping in and out of the water and performing flips in the boats wake. Once our crew had decided that we were in a good position we slipped into the freezing cold water and tried to get the dolphins attention. The tips we had been given had basically amounted to “be a dolphin”. We were to appear stream lined, dive down when they approached, circle around them as they did to us, and make dolphin sounds. The crew must get a right laugh at the noises everyone makes through their snorkels as they try to make friends with the dolphins. We had several opportunities to swim with the dolphins and I was lucky enough to have two circle around me for the majority of one of our swims. I had taken my camera in with me, but they are just too quick so all I managed to get were blurry dolphin shots whilst in the water.
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Incredible picture! I've been following you're blog for a while and picked up some great tips from it. Courtesy of your blog post on thai boxing we were able to go down and watch it for free at the MBK center in Bangkok.
Keep up the excellent blogs and tips.
That's an awesome picture! I'd love to be there, and would even get up in the morning to see the dolphins jump.
Wow…. Beautiful photo!
Picture perfect. Almost doesn't look real.
Nice photo Dan. Some of the dorsal fins look quite large -they look like Orcas! Anyway if you get to the north island check out Whakatane where Moko the bottlnose dolphin is busy entertaining a lot of people.
He has a face book page "mokoinwhakatane' and a blog "mokoinwhakatane.co.nz"
cheers
Dave
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Stunning photo, Dan