Seabirds galore on an Albatross Encounter Tour
A morning Albatross Encounter tour awaited and I eagerly met up with skipper Gary to head out on the hunt for the mightiest sea bird of them all. Our boat was small and open-sided which meant a perfect view was to be had on this gloriously sunny day. Gary explained that one of the best starting points was to seek out the local fishing boats as sea birds naturally pursue these chaps hoping for some of their scraps. It didn’t take very long to spot some activity up ahead and our little boat surfed and jumped the pacific waves rapidly to reach it. Almost immediately we began being circled by some rare and exciting sea birds – Mollymawks, Westland Petrels (who I personally thought had handsome faces), and boisterous Northern Giant Petrels who happily scrapped with each other right by our boat as they fought over the chunk of ham Gary had tossed into the ocean. After a short while and a lot of happy photo snaps later we headed off again. This time Gary told us we were going further out to sea all the way to the edge of the Kaikoura Canyon. As the engine stopped and we bobbed and swayed about it was mentioned that the sea floor beneath us was at least 1km deep! Our eyes were thankfully more focused on what was happening overhead. We all silently waited as more and more birds began to appear. Gary pointed several specific ones out for our attention – the Hutton’s Shearwater and Buller’s Shearwater, a Wandering Gibson’s Albatross and a New Zealand White-Capped Albatross. An awesome spectacle was on display but the show stopper and the bird we all instantly recognized with a collective gasp was the Southern Royal Albatross. It soared across in front of the boat, a very close distance above our heads! For a bird with such a large wingspan (about three metres) it was wondrously graceful. It felt awfully surreal drifting about out on the ocean with the only noise being a raucous squeal or flap of oversized wings. Gary informed us that many of the Albatross we were seeing nest down in the Campbell Islands, 700km south of New Zealand’s South Island. Several of these Albatross have been tracked using satellite transmitters which have showed them capable of travelling up to 1,000km per day!! Despite observing all these astounding over-sized seabirds my own personal favourite was the little Fluttering Shearwater – a tiny guy by comparison. They fly just above the water with a series of rapid wing beats – hence their endearing name.