Whale shark pops up to surprise fisherman off Northland’s Poor Knights Islands

A Whangārei man had an unusual encounter with a curious whale shark off the Northland coast yesterday afternoon when it swam around and underneath his boat.

Glen McKenzie told the Herald he was set to leave his nearly 10-hour solo marlin fishing trip, near Poor Knights Islands, yesterday afternoon.

“Coming home, I had two lures in the water and I was pushing the speed for them a bit, and one popped out of the water,” McKenzie said.

“So I stopped the boat, started to wind the lures in, and next thing I know the shark came up behind the boat.

“I wound frantically to get the lures out of the water and idly sat there, and he came right up to the boat.”

McKenzie captured the five-minute encounter of the shark swimming around and under the boat.

Whale sharks have unique spots on their skin.

“When he went under the boat for the last time, he must have hit his dorsal fin and must have got a fright. I certainly fell over.”

He immediately identified the animal because previous fishers had been talking about another one around the same area the day before.

“I wasn’t expecting to see one, but then it popped up.

“I have seen some pretty cool things before but I have never seen a whale shark. It had a little school of fish over its shoulder.”

The whale shark wasn’t McKenzie’s only encounter, having seen a mako shark early in the morning.

“I put a line out when I got out there and hooked up a mako within five minutes. I tossed it back though.”

Marine scientist Clinton Duffy said whale sharks are traditionally docile creatures.

“They are very curious, they won’t eat you.

“They will quite regularly approach boats and rub on them, and they can even approach divers.”

Duffy said whale sharks are a tropical species and rare in New Zealand waters.

He said normally there are only two or three sightings per season but this year has been a bumper season.

“The waters are warmer around the upper North Island than they usually are and there has been a marine heatwave going on for a couple of years, but this year has been good for big tropical pelagic species,” he said.

“There have been a lot of marlin caught, quite large tuna, and a lot of manta rays in the Hauraki Gulf.”