Finally finished - at least for the time being - sorting through 900+ shots taken on a
whalewatching trip from Kaikoura. We didn't see any big whales, but a couple of huge pods of pilot whales, which, as pedants will surely note, are not actually whales but large dolphins. The skipper did try to find us some of the sperm whales which are resident in the area, but they weren't cooperating.
First: the location. Several miles offshore, over a deep underwater canyon, with the Kaikōura Ranges (highest Tapuae-o-Uenuku, 2885 m, just out of shot) looking down, on a perfect day.
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And so to the whales:
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Long-finned pilot whales,
Globicephala melas edwardii - might be a family group: biggest fins may be males, smallest are calves - of which there were plenty. [
NZ Dept of Conservation,
Wikipedia,
Project Jonah]
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Mother and calf.
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Best buddies
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Many of them had scratches all over their backs. I have no idea what causes them, but we did see some local fur seals swimming in one pod, and in the deeps there are giant squid big enough to scar a sperm whale...
My hit rate of useful pictures was fairly low. I experimented with precapture at 15 fps, hence the large number of pix to sort through, but the whales weren't really doing lots of jumping around, so mostly got fins and tails and spouts. I did struggle with the eye focus feature - my eye was scanning the viewfinder looking for whales, and so the focus system was jumping around too much. I like using it with more static subjects. Should have turned it off and tried back button focus. Next time, perhaps.
