"Swimming with dolphins in the ha ..." a Akaroa Travel Page by Kate-Me

The morning after our arrival in Akaroa, we were up early and heading for the pier for our (pre booked as it's rather popular) swimming with dolphins harbour cruise.
Not just any kind of dolphins (though of course the common ones are gorgeous too).
These are Hectors Dolphins, the only New Zealand dolphin to have a rounded dorsal fin, as you can see clearly here. They're also much smaller than common dolphins (about 1mt 40 in length). Their grey and white colouring has given them the nickname 'the Panda of the sea'.
It was the first time I'd heard of these dolphins, let alone seen them, and I am a dolphin lover, so I'm not surprised to learn they're endangered.
There are net fishing controls around the Banks Peninsula now to protect them.

Hectors dolphins are found only in New Zealand in the South Island, and though they can be seen at several places, I believe there are only two towns where you can actually swim with them (here and at Greymouth on the West Coast, and believe me, Greymouth's river isn't this pretty, or anywhere near as long as this harbour - it's a bit industrial)
These dolphins are still completely wild, aren't fed or attracted to the boat in any way, apart from their natural curiousity.
Several other tourists told us that this is the best place to be with them (and the tour with our company, Canterbury Cat, which was also recommended to us, is considerably cheaper than the 'swimming with Dusky Dolphins' cruises further north up the coast at the even more animal-watch touristy Kaikoura)

Certainly the harbour provides a great setting to see these beautiful creatures, and protection from sharks. Good fishing here is also available for the dolphins.

Unfortunately the water isn't very clear to try and see them when they're underwater, though, especially as we had no sun, just grey cloud cover)

We set off in the medium sized boat, about 20 of us, kitted up in our wetsuits, with facemasks but no flippers (they want the trip to be minimal impact - you're in the water with the dolphins, but not to swim after them and definitely not allowed to try and touch them).
15 minutes later, and still no dolphin sighting at all (though I thought I'd seen 3 in the far distance) we reached the mouth of the harbour where it meets the sea, and there was nothing to do but turn around, as we were told they wouldn't be out there.
Even the official spotter boat sitting in the middle of the harbour within sight of the mouth of the sea hadn't seen any when our boat radioed it.

We were becoming a bit worried and pessimistic as our boat checked the coves, with all of us on board watching carefully too, and we still found none, when way up ahead, back towards Akaroa harbour, we could see another boat, with swimmers in the water, which could only mean one thing: they'd found some dolphins.

We had to stay back and just idle a bit, and wait to see what was going on.
The pods are normally quite small - 3 to 6 dolphins only.
I guess we were waiting to see if any would break from their group and come towards our boat to check us out. I don't know if these ones did, but within 5 minutes, we then saw our first small group of dolphins.

Everyone immediately became enthusiastic again, and clambered into the freezing water....only to have the dolphins swim away again, and leave us in there, half frozen.
Half of us, myself included, were back out of the water in 2 minutes flat, and stayed on board, waiting for the dolphins to come back again, which after another couple of waits, they did.

It was excellent!

When the group swam away again, the boat powered slowly along, looking for some more.
We looked down at the front of the boat and there were 3 of them, playing and riding on our bow wave. It was fantastic!

You'll need to blow this one up. If you do, you'll see how close one of the dolphins was to the snorkellers (and they came closer too).
My husband is the one in the middle with his head down and snorkel up (trying in vain to see them through the opaque water).

The guy on the right, if he is the one I'm thinking of, was rather amusing.
The experience left him speechless, and all he was capable of uttering was "Oh Wow! in his British accent, every time a dolphin surfaced near him (and they did it quite a lot, more than they did near all of the others except for 1 person, so I reckon it's that they wanted a better look at this odd creature who always said exactly the same thing, in the same awe struck happy tone of voice).

While I was in the water, one of the dolphins even did a couple of leaps right out of the water, in front of us (which our guides told us rarely happens, as this type of dolphin doesn't jump much at all). So that was really special too.

The maximum time allowed in the water was 1 hour, so before we knew it, it was time to get out, and say goodbye to our special friends.

We'd taken only the 2nd trip out of the morning (6.30 and 8.30 were the early boats) which we were told was a good move, because later in the day, there are so many more boats, and sometimes the dolphins don't come as much (or I guess their attention is rather split!)

Another Dolphin watching cruise in the harbour.

The Akaroa Lighthouse, on our way back to Akaroa.

Arriving back at the large wharf at Akaroa. As you can see, our weather had deteriorated drastically from the day before, and I no longer had that 'this feels like the mediterranean' feeling when I looked at the beach and the water!