Dolphins and Dugongs

stromatalites. more interesting than they look
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Right, first things first, if you are older than 8 and looking for some dolphin action, head over to New Zealand (Kaikoura probably).

Having said that we were once again hampered by our spectacular planning and were still here during the school holidays so the daily dolphin feeding was a bit like kindergarten, but with more dolphins, obviously.

do dolphins have noses

We were also unlucky enough to be there when feeding was at the same time as an unusually low tide, which meant that the dolphins didn't come in too close to the beach for fear of getting mud up there noses (do dolphins have noses?)  If all this sounds like I'm moaning a bit it is only a prelude to talking about our dugong boat trip.

monkey mia dolphin, smiling for the camera. but is not a show. honest
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We took a cruise out on the Shotover catamaran, very nice big boat that sailed us out to the sea grass meadows were the dugongs were virtually leaping out of the water.  Dugongs are pretty rare worldwide, and normally very shy.  About 10% of the world's population (of dugongs, not people) live at Monkey Mia.  And they all go away for a month or so in September, only to come back and be particularly sociable for a couple of weeks at exactly the time we were there.  So that was very exciting (for us dugong fans) sadly no photos of these beasts as we only had our new (and now broken) unbreakable camera with us.