Diary from the Lookout: the Cook Strait Whale Survey 2004-2015
by Carol Dawber and Nadine Bott
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 When marine mammal scientists Simon Childerhouse and Nadine Bott needed to survey the numbers of humpback whales passing through Cook Strait on their annual winter migration from Antarctica to their Pacific breeding grounds they turned to the locals for help. That’s when the Heberley family of Arapawa Island stepped up, offering support, hospitality and their extended network of knowledge and expertise. Descending from a long line of Tory Channel whalers, Joe Heberley had worked as a gunner at the Perano whaling station and he called in his former workmates to work as spotters for the Department of Conservation project. What followed was 12 years of teamwork, camaraderie and shared knowledge as scientists, DOC staff, volunteers and former whalers manned a lookout high above the Tory Channel entrance and recorded the slow recovery of the humpbacks.

Diary from the Lookout draws on the daily diary kept by the spotters, the photographs taken by the DOC team and the stories and anecdotes of those who took part in the survey as participants, volunteers or visitors. It records the last chapter in the proud history of the Tory Channel whalers.


Published by River Press, Picton, NZ
Available October 2022
ISBN 978-0-4736136-6-2
Content: 172pp, illustrated with full colour photographs, indexed

$50.00+$7.50 pp in NZ ($18pp to Australia) 

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