Kaikōura: Eating crayfish and watching whales

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Kaikōura is a major whale-watching destination, between Blenheim and Christchurch on the east coast of New Zealand’s South Island.

The town sits just to the landward side of a deep submarine trench, whose chilly uplifting waters nourish large populations of crayfish, the namesakes of Kaikōura, which means ‘eat crayfish’ in Māori.

The town is also just to the seaward side of two ranges of lofty coastal mountains shooting all the way up to the 2885 m or 9,465-foot Tapuae-o-Uenuku (‘footsteps of the rainbow god’): a very prominent and Himalayan-looking peak that’s easily visible from Wellington.

But there’s a lot more than just crayfish living in the waters off Kaikōura. Their cousins, the shrimp-like krill that feed the greatest whales, also thrive in these waters, which plunge rapidly to great depths just offshore, as quickly as the mountains rise onshore. These great, cold depths create upwellings that fertilise the sea and nourish the krill. This brings whales that feed on krill, sucking in entire shoals and then filtering out the water through a comb-like structure in their mouths made of a substance called baleen.‍

Another quite different kind of large whale that is often seen at Kaikōura is the sperm whale. Sperm whales can dive up to two thousand metres down or more than a mile, in fact: going down for about 45 minutes at a time and then catching their breath for about fifteen minutes on the surface.

Original blog post: a-maverick.com/blog/kaikoura-eating-crayfish-watching-whales