Visitors In the Bay

Building up to Christmas work was pretty slow. Its summer over here and everyone goes on their summer holidays and takes about 6 weeks of work! not me.. i only had 2 weeks planned off and that included nearly five days travel! (losing a day in the process!)

One evening after work i took a long drive home around Moa Point and round the bays. I stopped and took these lovely picture of the Escort and noticed a load of cars parked up in the next bay. There were also allot of people on the rocks looking out to sea!

"Dolphins" i thought , and headed to join them.


on arrival out on these rock i was greeted with an amazing sight....

not dolphins but Orcas !!

There were around 6 or 8 Orcas in total. MOst were quite young and near to the shore with the adults out to sea doing alot of tail slapping.
Apparently the tail slapping sends the fish towards the shore for the young to feed on...
It was amazing to watch the swim by and breach the water. The only thing was that they swam so fast and were underwater for such a long time it was really hard to keep up with them. I decided to jump in the car and head to another vantage point and watch them again. Annoyingly i didn't have my binoculars but i did have my camera.....





I followed them for around 2 hours along the coast of Wellington. Stopping in the car and watching them swim by.
Absolutely amazing sight. something you really don't see every day at all.
At one point i was able to get ahead of them and out on to a pier than stood only 4 ft above the water. I ran down the pier and as i approached the end i meet a German couple who asked if everything was ok as I was running ?
I exclaimed that there were orcas in the bay and as we all turned around four Orcas surfaced right by the pier and then dived underneath to re-surface again on the other side!
I was so excited telling the German couple that in true form i missed the moment with the camera ... i did get this which gives you some idea of how close they were ...




All in all a pretty amazing journey home from work. Not something that you would see on the tube in london...
Oh how i miss that tube!


with kind permission here are a few pictures from Micheal Lanzensberger from Weta who was watching the Orcas too. ( he just had a decent camera with him.! Thanks MIcheal!)