making footprints...: My day on land...WOW

Saturdays are my land day, so i grabbed a cereal bar and power-walked to work, listening to my ipod. Iwas just making hot chocolates at around 8ish and the radio came on..."iv got Orca here..." a skipper was informing us. I ran out and popped mynhead through the wetsuits and told the crew. I was so excited, then i realised i wouldn't be seeing them as i was on land. I decided to ask Mal if she would get some shots for me on my camera....she returned with a huge smile on her face and i had a full memory card....here are just a few...

They hung around all day, feeding on the sting ray in the shallower waters. They can reach just under 10m in length. They have a large dorsal fin which can reach 1.8m. At encounter we try and keep a record of each of the individuals which pass trough and we have a fairly good catalogue now. They have a distinct saddle (grey/white patch) behind their dorsal fin. Their blow is tall and bushy and they often travel in tight unison as you can see from the images.
simply amazing-i wished i could of been there to experience them, but i was on land, cleaning and washing wet suits....

I thought it was going to be one of those days, and then Jess (one of the senior guides) said..."jenny how much do you love me?" i replied with "LOTS!"... she then said "would you like to come for a flight?" i almost cried, i ripped off my humongous wetsuit machine gloves and my apron and hugged her!

Then i was being strapped into the wings over whales plane and with the headset on the pilot took off...it was simply incredible, i couldn't believe i was flying over Kaikoura, we were in search of a pod of dolphin, as they had been unable to swim, as their were Orca in the area and they had been hunting which had spooked the duskys....The coastline looked stunning. Then suddenly we saw splashing and there they were 300+ dusky dolphin, running free in the Pacific ocean. Just beautiful. Jess radiod the boats and gave a GPS location, we circled a few times, enough to see them leaping and jumping, one of the best moments of my life. We also came accross macrel bait balls in the ocean, unfortunately the Orca had headed north so we missed them, but i had been treated and the images of those dolphins roaming free will stay with me forever.