Hello! Spring Break has brought a whole host of adventures! Halfway through the first week, I left for Kaikoura for a field trip. It was a lovely place with a beautiful view. We are studying conservation and the co-management of resources, so we visited the field station and rahui there. A rahui is a temporary restriction that is often used to allow a resource to replenish itself. We worked with paua, or abalone, but more on that later.
Last Wednesday (August 27th) we headed up, and one of the first things we saw was a fluffy cluster of fur seals! They were supposed to be up a trail by a waterfall, but instead, we found them all curled up on the beach. Most were snoozing, but some were playing in little pools in the rocks. They were so cute!
The second day, we tagged paua. We glued little yellow tags to their shells until we had a layer of superglue over our fingers. Then we made bags out of kelp, which is the traditional way of releasing the paua. We turned the kelp inside-out to give the paua some of the nutrients and algae on the outside, then cut slits in the side for them to escape through when they are ready. We released some of the critters this way, but others we released with the modern method: we set them on rocks and allowed them to crawl underneath on their own time.
On the third day we got up early to to whale watching while the other half of the class hiked around to see a Hutton's shearwater colony. It wasn't too eventful as far as whale watches go, but it was still really cool! We saw albatross and a lot of fur seals, but the highlight of the trip was a sperm whale that surfaced twice during the tour.
In short, the field trip was lots of fun. There was great food and lots of fun activities. I've only mentioned a few of the highlights here, but it was definitely a great experience all around.
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