Whales
- Thread starter KCZooFan
- Start date
polar bear
Well-Known Member
Gray Whales, Orcas, Humpback Whales, Blue Whales and assorted dolphins -- all off the Califiornia coast.
Some times you don't even get as far as being disappointed in a boat!
Before I went to Kaikoura everyone I spoke to said "I went there but the whale watching trips were cancelled." So we went for 5 days (we needed a final rest after weeks of travelling too).
We booked our trip for day 1 so we'd have plenty of time to try again. That was the first day it had gone out for a week. It went for about 2 days and then couldn't again. We went to the cafe one day and a poor Japanese girl was sobbing, she'd spent a week in Kaikoura and the boat wasn't going out. She'd gone south but heard the boats were going out again so she'd come up for the day only to be told they were off again. This was late January!
Rhiannon23
Member
If the other posters are anything like me, then we have listed the times that we have seen things and not the many boat trips when we saw something small in the distance or nothing at all, or bad weather stopped play. But fortunately, I love being out in boats (whatever the weather) so no trip for me is a waste of time (but I can appreciate that spending a week somewhere waiting for a boat to go out is frustrating).
Rhiannon23
Member
And there are the brilliant times when the whales are almost too close to take proper pictures of!
Meaghan Edwards
Well-Known Member
I've seen Bottlenosed Dolphins, Common Porpise Pygmy Killer Whale and Pilot Whales in Florida and off of Sullivan's Island, SC.
RowanGreen
Well-Known Member
If you want definite sightings of Orca, then Vancouver is probably the place to go. They have a resident population that's always around, and lots of boats spotting where they are each day and telling each other! Though as previously pointed out, that does mean there tends to be a lot of boats around when you actually get to see the whales, which perhaps detracts from the 'naturalness'.
A bit of fine tuning on that that I've learnt (at least this was the situation a few years ago...). The southern resident population ranges between Vancouver and the south end of Vancouver Island, near Victoria. They spend more time at the Victoria end. This means that going from Victoria you'll probably spend less time on the boat, but if the whales are actually up at the Vancouver end, they won't travel up there, and sightings are not guarenteed. If you take a tour from the Vancouver end (as I did) then they are more set up to do the long trip down south, as they did on the day I went. That means several hours on the boat before you see the whales. But the Vancouver operators tend to guarentee sightings, which means if you don't see a whale, you get a free trip another day.
Either way you get to spend 20 minutes or so tops around the whales (that's the regulations...). And of course trips can be cancelled due to bad weather.
A bit of fine tuning on that that I've learnt (at least this was the situation a few years ago...). The southern resident population ranges between Vancouver and the south end of Vancouver Island, near Victoria. They spend more time at the Victoria end. This means that going from Victoria you'll probably spend less time on the boat, but if the whales are actually up at the Vancouver end, they won't travel up there, and sightings are not guarenteed. If you take a tour from the Vancouver end (as I did) then they are more set up to do the long trip down south, as they did on the day I went. That means several hours on the boat before you see the whales. But the Vancouver operators tend to guarentee sightings, which means if you don't see a whale, you get a free trip another day.
Either way you get to spend 20 minutes or so tops around the whales (that's the regulations...). And of course trips can be cancelled due to bad weather.
Cool! Any photos of the Pygmy Killer Whale? Where exactly did you see them? More than once?
I have seen minke whale, harbour porpoise, bottlenose whale (the one in the Thames 
) and orca (off the coast of the Farne Islands in 2014 summer).
) and orca (off the coast of the Farne Islands in 2014 summer).
I have seen minke whale, harbour porpoise, bottlenose whale (the one in the Thames
any photos of the bottlenosed whale!?
since 2010 I have added four more species (not from NZ):
Southern right whale Eubalaena australis
Irrawaddy dolphin Orcaella brevirostris
Gangetic river dolphin Platanista gangetica
IndoPacific bottlenose dolphin Tursiops aduncus
Orcas on a boat trip out of Seattle.
I will add more this fall when I do my first trip to Alaska.
I will add more this fall when I do my first trip to Alaska.
Unfortunately not as I was very young when it happened, and didn't have a camera to hand.
Just bottlenose dolphins for me. The Gulf Coast is home to a variety of cetacean species, but to my dismay, most of them prefer to hang out in the deep, open water, mocking me. Not much chance I'll get to see one here. When I can afford to travel I hope to go whale-watching and see other species.