Jaunted: Swimming with Mini Dolphins in New Zealand

One of the experiences I was most looking forward to on my recent trip to New Zealand was the chance to travel to the little town of Akaroa.

You probably never heard of it, and neither had I until I started researching my trip. I came across it, though, because it's just an hour outside Christchurch along winding mountain roads on the Banks Peninsula. The town was settled by Frenchmen, so it's distinctive in terms of New Zealand, and it's a little port that sits on a harbor formed by the collapse of an ancient volcano. And in that harbor lives a colony of the world's smallest marine dolphins--the Hector Dolphin--of which only about 7,000 remain in the world.


These little guys are smaller than me, as you'll see from this photo, which I took to give you a little bit of scale. Find out just how small they are, why they're so hard to capture on film, and which of the world's other smallest creatures live in this stunning setting by reading my Jaunted article below.

Link: http://www.jaunted.com/story/2011/11/28/21941/394/travel/Where+to+See+%28and+Swim+With%29+the+World%92s+Smallest+Dolphins+and+Penguins

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