Otago Harbor cruise.

Today's trip was a bit more exciting than yesterday's: a cruise through Otago Harbor and out a little ways into the open sea. The Monarch, pride of Monarch Wildlife Cruises, is a sixty-foot (or so) passenger boat with an open foredeck and plenty of wooden benches. We boarded her at the Dunedin wharf, perched on the benches, and took a leisurely ride outwards. For the first hour or so, in the inner harbor, we followed a low rock wall built to direct the tide's scouring so it maintains the shipping channel. On our side, the water was nine meters deep; on the other, low tide had uncovered expanses of sand flat. Two species of oystercatchers, one endemic to Otago and the other horribly endangered, darted along the sand and probed for invertebrates. Various gulls and terns wheeled and screamed overhead. When the pilot/tour-guide pointed out the low-flying, ragged black shapes of birds called shags, it took me a moment to realize why they were so familiar: "shag" is apparently Kiwi for "cormorant". (It's strange to me, but the same type of bird that's so common on Lake Erie is worth pointing out on a New Zealand wildlife cruise.) There were several species, in varying degrees of rarity and endangerment. Many wore specks and slashes of white -- their breeding plumage.

By this time, I'd both met and chatted a bit with a Scottish girl named Laura. We'd both been leaning over the wharf railing, checking out the weeds and barnacles of low tide, and struck up a conversation. She studies zoology and is particularly interested in marine biology, so she was loving the birds and the slow sway of the water. The hills around us -- green and bronze, forested or meadowed, dotted with sheep or dwellings, sometimes rough with volcanic cliffs and outcrops -- were very like Scotland, she said when I commented again on their beauty. We ended up spending the whole trip together.

Out through the long, narrow harbor we proceeded. The channel ran between a pair of small, forbidding islands -- Goat Island and Quarantine Island, where gender-separated groups of scarlet-fever sufferers once lived out their respective quaratines -- before opening out and deepening considerably. Out at Port Chalmers, just beyond that point, the largest ships of Otago harbor dock. There were none moored when we passed by, but judging by the sheer size of the loading machinery, they're ocean-going freighters of a size that makes our Lake Erie coal-haulers look like skiffs.

A few miles out beyond that (more scenery, more shags and oystercatchers), we came finally to the mouth of the harbor. A wide sandy spit closed much of it off, but we swung around it to meet Taieri Head. That cliff-sided, wind-torn crest houses only an old lighthouse and a few dirt roads by way of human habitation, but its wildlife is much more interesting. For one thing, it's the only mainland nesting site of the northern royal albatross: when we passed by, we spotted several of the large white birds scattered across the upper hillsides. Those were the current year's chicks, full-grown and near to fledging. One stretched its wings wide... oh, but those birds are huge! Three meters easily, and it was barely full-grown.

The albatrosses are the most famous Taieri inhabitants, but they're by no means the only interesting ones. The Stewart Island shags, largest and rarest of the species we'd spotted on the way out, also nest there in reasonable numbers. Several New Zealand fur seal mothers had apparently liked the look of the place, for there were six or eight half-grown pups lounging on the rocks. They took little interest in the Monarch, allowing us to coo over the sheer cuteness of the roly-poly fluffballs. Thank goodness sealskin gloves are no longer made. Later on, we would detour to investigate a suspicious cloud of gulls and find at the bottom a sea lion on the prowl, eyeing two nearby little blue penguins (that's the species name) before striking off in a different direction entirely.

We'd steamed out into the open ocean by this point, swinging around to get a better look at the seal pups on the lower rock battlements. In the process I was reminded just how different the Pacific's waves are from my familiar inland waters: the swells were probably five to eight feet, judging by the distances they washed against the long rock algae, but the wavelengths were so long that the boat just shifted with long slow breaths. On Lake Erie, waves that big would have been smashing over the rails and driving us back to port as fast as we could afford to go.

And that's when the first adult albatross arrived. It wasn't a northern royal, but the Buller's albatross that came skimming right at us was still briefly breathtaking. It looked like nothing quite so much as an enormous, long-winged black-backed gull, with a long, viciously hooked beak and gently recurved crossbow-shaped wings. Despite hardly flapping at all, the bird came skimming low over the waves with startling speed: our pilot informed us at this point that they regularly cruise at 60 kph, which shouldn't have surprised me given the way this one was flying so close to shore.

We crowded the rails, brandishing cameras that were reluctant to focus on the fast-moving shard of white against gray-blue water. Video helped. I did get a few nice shots even before the creature landed on the waves, turning its head to stare back at us.

To add to the wonder, it wasn't the only one to appear. Within fifteen minutes we had no less than four of the great birds skimming around us or bobbing at our bows. Probably they'd mistaken the Monarch for a fishing boat and were hoping for handouts from the gutting. We all leaned precariously over the rails, aiming cameras at them; the pilot obliged by bringing the bow around to pass between two of them. Oh, the photo opportunities!

By the time we finally turned back towards the harbor, the weather had begun to turn from cloudy, grey, and chilly to drizzly, grey, and cold. For most of the return journey, I settled on the protected aft deck and cheerfully helped maul the platters of mini-samosa that Arcadia provided. This place is going to be terrible for my eating habits, heh.

After docking, as the group dispersed, Laura and I exchanged cell phone numbers and promises to meet up again this weekend. I'd made a new friend, spotted rare wildlife, got some great photos, and had a generally good time. A great use for a Saturday!