Photos

Kaikoura on the east coast of New Zealand's South Island is one of the best places in the world for whale watching. A deep ocean trough comes unusually close to the coastline here creating lots of nutritious plankton soup. And where you get lots of plankton you get whales. Often the whales come so close to the shore that it is possible to sit on the beach and watch them surface and dive!

Virtually the whole town is geared towards the whale watching industry as illustrated by this enormous whale painting on the side of a scuba-diving centre on the main high street - come on, you didn't think it was a REAL whale, did you?!

Tne image was rotated slightly and cropped in Photoshop otherwise it's as taken - I took several photos and looking back at them on screen I seemed to have great difficulty making the photos level. I guess the slope going up one way and the lower jaw of the sperm whale going up the other confused me somewhat! ;)

Rich