A man filming his diving expedition in Northland caught more than crayfish when he came face to face with a pod of orcas.
Aucklander Mike Coughlan was filming a diving trip off Matai Bay on the Karikari Peninsula before Christmas with a friend, and as he resurfaced found himself upclose and personal with an 8m orca and her 1.5m calf.
"I was coming back to the boat after diving for crays and was behind the boat when the mother and calf came towards me," he told the Herald.
The whale dwarfed the 5.6m speedboat he was diving from, he said.
"I think they were curious. I didn't really have time to be scared or intimidated, they were just suddenly there."
"The mother and calf came right up, about half a metre, to the boat ... I had my GoPro [camera] on a stick so I dropped it into the water and filmed them coming over."
He counted six whales in the pod, and said they swam from where the boat was, about 300m from shore, into Matai Bay.