Merry Christmas!! On Boxing day I was filming Orca with Dr Ingrid Visser on board her research boat. The Orca were in Whangarei Harbour (North east North Island, NZ) feeding on the plentiful Stingrays there. Here are some frame grabs from my video footage. The ray in the shot is a long tailed ray, the depth is about 13m (40ft) and the visibility was a lowly 2m from the recent rainfall. (my wide angle lens makes it look way clearer than it actually was!!)
While on board the boat and watching the pod of about 10 Orca feeding in the harbour, Ingrid noticed that 3 Orca were working the same spot for a while- she said they would be trying to catch a long tailed ray...sure enough when I got in the water and eventually found the ray she was right! It was a very large ray that the 3 Orca attempted to pick up numerous times for almost 15 minutes.
It was very dark and a little eerie in the murky water, but amazing watching the oceans apex predator at work...this time though the ray lived to see another day (not what can be said about countless eagle rays this day!). The ray eventually found itself a small hollow in the sand. It managed to swim there and hug the bottom, making it virtually impossible for the Orca to lift a wing off the bottom and get a good hold of it.
It was very cool to have my son Dylan (8) onboard for the first time as the research assistant... he did amazing and had a great initiation receiving a face full of Orca snot later in the day : ) He was actually quite the pro at spotting Orca in the choppy seas once we left the harbour.
This day was the best early Christmas present ever!!
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| I finally found the action... a very large ray knowing it was in big trouble! |
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| Numerous attempts were made to pick it up off the harbour floor |
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| After managing to lift it up, the ray is dropped |
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| With just a corner of the wing in the Orcas mouth, the weight proves too much again and it's released |
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| The size of both the hunter and the hunted is hard to appreciate with these pics! |
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| Finally the ray finds a hollow in the sand to hide in and lives to tell the tale |
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