Kaikōura

The peninsula was settled early and repeatedly. Middens and cooking sites on its shores record moa hunting and centuries of fishing, and the name Kaikōura — kai, food, and kōura, crayfish — is linked to the traveller Tama-ki-te-rangi, who is said to have eaten crayfish here. Successive iwi occupied the headland, and by the early 19th century Ngāti Kurī, a hapū of Ngāi Tahu, held the district from pā sites whose defences can still be traced above the sea.

European whalers arrived in the 1840s. Robert Fyffe set up a shore station in 1842 at Te Wai-o-puka, a headland of the peninsula, and the cottage now known as Fyffe House survives from that time, its foundations partly whale vertebrae. Whaling gave way to sheep farming on the flats and high country, and to fishing for crayfish and cod. The Main North Line railway reached the town from both directions in the 1940s, linking it to Christchurch and Picton, and the coast road brought passing traffic.

Modern Kaikōura was made by wildlife. Sperm whales feed year-round in the canyon offshore, and in 1987 a group of local Māori families founded a whale-watching venture that grew into the town's largest employer and changed it from a stop on the highway into a destination. On 14 November 2016 a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck the district, lifting sections of the seabed clear of the water, burying the highway and railway under landslides and cutting the town off by land for weeks. Both routes were rebuilt, and the raised rock platforms are now part of the shoreline.

The town's identity rests on the sea. Crayfishing families, charter skippers, boat crews and marine scientists all work out of the same two small harbours, and conversation turns on swell, wind and quota. Ngāti Kurī is central to that culture: the hapū's involvement in tourism means many visitors first hear about the coast in Māori terms, with karakia before a boat leaves and stories of Tama and of the taniwha of the canyon told alongside the biology of the whales. Takahanga Marae stands on a terrace above the town centre.

Conservation is unusually prominent for a place of this size. The Hikurangi Marine Reserve and the wider Kaikōura (Te Tai o Marokura) marine management area were created in 2014 after years of negotiation between fishers, iwi, tour operators and scientists led by the local guardians group Te Korowai o Te Tai o Marokura, and the town has long promoted itself on environmental certification. Rules about how close boats and swimmers may come to whales, dolphins and seals are taken seriously, and residents are quick to correct visitors who climb among the seals for photographs.

Otherwise this is a South Island country town: a rugby club and an A&P show, a small museum run largely by volunteers, fundraising raffles in the pub, and a long collective memory of the 2016 earthquake and the months of isolation that followed. Seasonal workers and backpackers pass through in numbers each summer, giving the main street a more international feel than the district's size suggests.

About 2,350 people live in the town and roughly 4,300 in the wider Kaikōura District, which stretches along the coast and into the ranges. The resident population is older than the national average, and the summer population is several times larger, which shapes everything from supermarket queues to the availability of rooms for workers.

Tourism, fishing and farming carry the economy in that order. Whale watching, dolphin swimming, scenic flights, diving and albatross trips employ crew, guides, drivers and office staff; the crayfish fishery supplies both local stalls and export markets; and sheep, beef and some dairy occupy the narrow plain and the hill country behind it. A small commercial centre, the school, the health centre and the district council make up most of the remaining work. The earthquake rebuild brought years of construction traffic and, with it, a longer stretch of new road and cycleway along the coast.

The day starts early, with boats leaving soon after dawn and tour groups assembling on West End before the shops open. Housing supply is the standing local issue, as holiday homes and short-term rentals compete with workers for a small stock, and the district also debates water quality, coastal erosion and how many visitors the peninsula's tracks can take. Serious hospital care means a drive to Blenheim or Christchurch.

Crayfish — kōura, the spiny rock lobster of New Zealand waters — is the dish the town is named for and still the one people come to eat. It is usually served plainly: split, grilled or boiled, with butter or garlic, from a restaurant table or from a caravan beside the highway north of town. Prices follow the export market, and the cheapest way to try it is a half tail from a roadside stall rather than a whole one in a dining room.

The rest of the local catch is just as good and much cheaper. Blue cod and groper come battered in fish and chip shops, green-lipped mussels are steamed in wine, pāua, the black-shelled abalone, appears as fritters minced with egg and onion, and whitebait is bound into thin patties in spring. Scallops, octopus and salmon from Canterbury's hydro canals fill out menus, and smoked fish is sold from shop counters on the main street.

Away from the sea the food is Canterbury food: lamb and beef from the hill country, farm-gate honey, and stone fruit and berries trucked in from inland valleys in summer. Bakeries sell mince and cheese pies to travellers and shearing gangs alike. The district has a handful of small vineyards on the foothills north of the town, and their cellar doors double as lunch stops.