When I went on board the Whale Watch boat, Makawhiu, I kept telling myself that I might not see a whale. But I really wanted to. I wore my dolphin necklace for good luck. Lester is Makawhiu's skipper. He took us five kilometres offshore. The water out there is one and a half kilometres deep. It's full of plankton and fish and squid – all the things that whales like to eat. I kept looking at the sea, but I couldn't see anything that might be a whale. Then I heard Lester talking on Makawhiu's radio. The skipper on another boat was saying that there was a whale not far away. Lester wrote down the whale's position on his map. Makawhiu's engines started up, and we were off – whale spotting. When Makawhiu stopped, Lester put a hydrophone into the water. Under the sea, whales make squeals and clicking sounds that the hydrophone can "hear". But Lester said he wasn't picking up any sounds. That meant that the whale was on its way to the surface. Either that, or it was asleep, deep under the water! We waited . . . and waited . . . Then, close by, we heard a rush of air. A long, smooth, grey sperm whale was lying in the water close to the boat! Every time it let out a breath, a shower of mist and water rushed out of its blowhole. The whale floated in the sea like a giant rubber raft. Only one-third of its body was above the water, but once, just for a minute, I saw the whale's wrinkly eye. The whale made me want to laugh and cry at the same time. I wished I could touch it. I wished I could watch it all day.