The Sea Inside

and down exactly as the black swan does when disturbed’. Such stories, that moas might still be stalking their way through the wilderness, still persist, although little evidence exists to substantiate them, beyond blurred photographs, promises of plaster casts and rumours of giant nests in dead kauri trees.
    As Bill and I look across to the ocean from Fyffe House, the sun is already sinking. Ahead of us, the Kaikoura Canyon plunges more than six miles down to the ocean bed, the tail-end of the great chasm that marks the meeting of the Pacific and Indo-Asian tectonic plates, an abyss into which whole volcanoes are dragged down by the inexorable movements of continental drift. Extensive biomasses have been identified in the canyon, one hundred times more than expected in such waters; massive accumulations of life, from burrowing sea cucumbers to spoonworms, testament to this meeting of cool and warm currents that encourages upwelling nutrients and the innumerable organisms which feed on them.
    And down there also swim the largest cephalopods known to humans, and some unknown to us, too, perhaps. Giant squid with barbed tentacles, arms up to forty feet long, and eyes the size of basketballs to allow in what little remains of the light. Tennyson conjured up just such a creature,

    Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
    His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
    … Then once by man and angels to be seen,
    In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.

    These real-life krakens present a terrifying vision; or at least they would, if anyone had ever seen them in their natural state. But they too, like many of these islands’ animals, seem to be invisible.

    The next morning I get up three hours before dawn, pausing briefly to marvel that each encounter with a cetacean seems to demand ever-earlier risings. I dress quickly, sling my roll bag over my shoulder, and leave quietly by the back door, stepping out into the night-morning, then trudge down the hill to the shore. The Southern Cross binds the sky, pointing to the South Pole.
    I walk between yellow pools of street lights. The narrow park on the other side of the road, overlooking the shore, is decorated with an arbour of whale bone arches. The sea has stopped the roaring I could hear from my bedroom, a low rumbling that, in my restlessness, sounded like a perpetually-arriving train. I fight my imagination, which wants to fill my head with images of what might lie beyond the beach.
    Reporting for duty in a fluorescent-lit room, I tug on my wetsuit. Half an hour later, I’m tipped off the back of the boat and into the still-black ocean, falling through the foaming surf churned up by the propellers.
    Dark fins describe a wide circle a hundred yards away. It’s difficult to see what’s happening in the half-light – still more so since I’m hanging at sea level, waves slapping at my face. Frantically I tread water, trying to keep upright.
    Suddenly, scything through my misty horizon, they’re all around me. I’m in the middle of a super-pod of two hundred, probably many more, dusky dolphins.
    I see their shapes, exquisitely airbrushed black and white and pearl-grey, swimming beneath me. Steadily, the fins begin to gather and steer towards me, more and more, till I’m in an eddying mass of swooping, diving cetaceans.
    Everywhere I look there are dolphins; I’m encircled by them. They shoot from a single source like a shower of meteorites, their two-metre bodies zipping past, in and out of focus. I feel strangely calm. It’s hard to believe this is real at all, as if the frenzy were happening somewhere else entirely.
    But it’s here, in front of my face. As I look down into the water, one animal slips into place at my side, then swims round and round, daring me to keep up. I spiral my body, only more aware of my ineptitude in their environment.
    Dolphins are breaching right by me, turning somersaults in the air. How about this? Can you do that? I reach out, instinctively; they easily evade me. That’s not part of the game.
    Dizzy and elated, I’m about to haul myself back on the boat when the skipper, Al, holds out his open palms, indicating I should stay where I am.
    Is something wrong? He points over my head.
    I look round and see dozens of dolphins heading straight at me, like a herd of buffalo. For a moment I think they’re going to swim right into me. A ridiculous notion. They, like the whales, register my every move, my every dimension, both inside and