The Sea Inside

settlers, only to discover that by the time he arrived in August 1840, the M ā ori had resold the land to the British, who had established their control of New Zealand with the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, and had planted the Union Jack in Akaroa.
    Akaroa has not forgotten that it was nearly French. The Tricolore still flies in the centre of town; quaint gabled houses bear such names as La Belle Villa; you all but expect to see onion-sellers cycling down the streets. It is a peaceful, almost stage-set place, not unlike Freshwater Bay; a sense of sleepiness, if not complacency, masking its history. But it is not its history that has brought me to this last near-island. It is an animal named after an Englishman, and now one of the rarest of its kind.
    I’m lying in my wetsuit on the wooden pier in the sun, almost falling asleep, when I’m called. The boat is ready to leave. I clamber aboard, and we sail out towards the open ocean. The forecast is for high seas. I chat to the skipper, a New Zealander named Ian, and Alan, his first mate, a young Welshman. The water here is turbid – the perfect conditions for the Hector’s dolphin, named after Sir James Hector, Victorian director of Wellington’s Colonial Museum. They are the smallest of all dolphins; calves are barely bigger than rugby balls, and adults hardly more than a metre long.
    Unlike their acrobatic dusky cousins,
Cephalorhynchus hectori
do not immediately announce their presence with backflips and breaches. Their subtle circular fins slice through the waves before you have the chance to establish what they are. Small and fleet, they prefer the sanctuary of cloudy, coastal water as protection against predators, principally sharks. But those same waters make them vulnerable to human actions, subject to the pressures of a maritime nation which owns more boats per head than any other on earth. Stressed by noise, poisoned by chemical and agricultural pollution, and drowning in undiscriminating gillnets, as Dr Barbara Maas observes, these animals are dying more quickly than they breed. The North Island subspecies, known as Maui’s dolphin, constitutes just fifty-five individuals; as the most endangered of any cetacean, they are unable to sustain any more losses. They are on the brink of disappearance, here, at the end of the world, about to go the same way as the thylacine and the moa.
    It is almost impossible to imagine that these animals might not survive the century; that I could outlive them. While the deeper waters around New Zealand conceal species of beaked whales that have never been seen alive, the sheer energy of these diminutive cetaceans so close to shore seems to defy any notion of extinction. There’s something cartoon-like about them; not just in the way they move but in their rounded dorsals, like the handles on Continental coffee cups, the kind you can’t put your finger through; I might lean over and pick one up for a closer look.
    Togged-up and raring to go, like a greyhound at the gate, I perch on the diving platform at the back of the boat, blowing through my snorkel and slapping the water with my fins. ‘You’ve done this before, haven’t you?’ says Alan.
    The skipper shuts off the engine and I leap in. It’s terrifically difficult to tread water. The grey-white bodies begin to circle around me; it’s like being surrounded by sheep dogs. Then they begin leaping into the air, showing off their beautifully marked bodies, like little aeroplanes. Their black-and-white masked faces and striped bellies might as well be
moko
. But my body declines to act like a dolphin, and there’s as much seawater up my nose as there threatens to be in my lungs. I feel like a circus animal myself; and although the dolphins come to me of their own accord, I can’t help feeling they’d be better left alone. Exhausted, I haul myself up over the boat’s side. Sometimes it’s better to watch than to take part.
    Back in the guesthouse, in a tiny room made smaller by lace and chintz, I take two painkillers and fall asleep, to the memory of the rocking waves. I wake at dusk, still woozy with the sea. I wander through the empty town, closed-up and out of season. I look in through the windows of the only restaurant still open and see a handful of diners bent over their meals.
    I buy a bag of chips from the nearby takeaway and retreat to a bench overlooking the harbour. Afterwards I walk to the end of the pier, looking out to sea. I’m weary of being