Whitianga orca encounter: Swimmers 3m from ‘massive’ dorsal fin.

Orca at Whitianga's Wharekaho Beach on Sunday, August 10. Photo / Hayley Jones

Two Coromandel residents were treated to a special “adventure” when three orca joined their morning swim.

Clare Aull and Andrea Connolly, of Whitianga, said they went for a swim at Wharekaho Beach every day at 8.30am, but they hadn’t encountered marine wildlife before.

Aull said they were unaware of their “very large” company last Sunday, only noticing something was unusual when a crowd of people on the beach started taking pictures and videos - seemingly of them.

“We were just bobbing around, swimming, and facing the shore, then Andrea said to me, ‘Why are those people videoing us swimming?’,” she said.

Aull said they couldn’t hear whether the group on the beach was trying to get their attention.

Being camera-shy, Aull said they turned to avoid being filmed - only to be confronted with a “huge fin”.

“We’re at water level, so the fin is massive.

Whitianga resident Andrea Connolly, said the orca encounter was terrifying.

“Honestly, [it was] almost touchable, it was at least three metres away.”

The pair thought it was a shark, so they tried to escape the water rather quickly, with Connolly saying it had been a ”terrifying” discovery.

They then realised it was an orca and spotted two more close by, but Aull and Connolly still opted to exit the water.

They said it took them roughly over a minute to reach shore, where they watched from the safety of the beach.

Connolly said she acknowledged the orca might have just been “wanting to play”.

“[But] we weren’t going to wait and see.

“It was a bit of an adventure.”

Aull said while the encounter had been “a fright and a shock”, it wouldn’t stop her from going back into the water.

“It was just a one-off.”

Once they realised it was an orca, two more orcas a bit further away were seen approaching closer.

Meanwhile, Hayley Jones of Glass Bottom Boat Whitianga was among the spectators on the beach filming.

She posted the video on a local community page, saying the orca encounter was exciting.

“[The orca] was swimming shallow, looking for stingrays and swam straight past [the two women].”

She said after it passed, it tried to “surf in a wave”.

“It was a great watch.”

Jones said she believed the two women were busy talking, and “didn’t see the female orca approaching”.

“The kids and I shouted out to them to get their attention, then they saw the black dorsal,” she said.

Malisha Kumar is a multimedia journalist based in Hamilton. She joined the Waikato Herald in 2023 after working for Radio 1XX in Whakatāne.