ABSTRACT
1 Kaikoura is a small township on the east coast of the ancient land, Te Waipounamu (Greenstone Island), which most New Zealanders call the South Island. Kaikoura is wedged between the Seaward Kaikoura Ranges (rising to a height of 2,885 metres) and the Pacific Ocean, which within 500 metres of the shore drops 1,300 metres to the ocean floor into the vast depths of the Kaikoura Canyon. Snow-covered often for nine months of the year, the Kaikoura Mountains provide the backdrop for what has become one of nature’s most powerful signatures – the graceful flick of a tail of the sperm whale that goes “fluke-up, fluke-down”.
