{"id":308894,"date":"2025-11-26T01:27:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-26T01:27:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/308894\/"},"modified":"2025-11-26T01:27:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-26T01:27:08","slug":"watch-pod-of-hectors-dolphins-in-akaroa-harbour-come-to-the-aid-of-a-mother-and-her-calf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/308894\/","title":{"rendered":"Watch: Pod of Hector\u2019s dolphins in Akaroa Harbour come to the aid of a mother and her calf"},"content":{"rendered":"
A rare nursery pod of Hector\u2019s dolphins has been spotted supporting a new mother. Photo \/ Black Cat Cruises<\/p>\n
Black Cat has been operating out of Akaroa Harbour for 40 years, but although there have been baby dolphin sightings before, Milligan said this particular sighting is especially significant.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis one was extra special, with the team sighting what they call a nursery pod – a pod of all female dolphins helping a newborn calf sort of learn to surface and breathe for the first time, which is pretty amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll see the little baby dolphins, you know, swimming alongside their mum,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey stick nice and close to them once when they\u2019re new. But this is the first time that any of our staff has directly have been able to see this sort of nursery pod in action. <\/p>\n
\u201cAnd the fact that we\u2019re able to grab some video footage is just amazing.\u201d <\/p>\n
Milligan said several customers were on the boat during the sighting. <\/p>\n
\u201cI think when [customers] could see the excitement on our staff\u2019s faces and the understanding that this was something that they\u2019d never come across. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe skipper we had on yesterday has actually been driving boats out on Akaroa for over 20 years and this was the first time he\u2019d come across that.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think our staff go out every day with that sort of understanding that, you know, they\u2019re lucky to be heading out each day to go and see these little dolphins.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe really enjoy taking out visitors to go and experience them for the first time. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re just very fortunate to be out there frequently and have the opportunity to come across these sorts of events like this little baby.\u201d <\/p>\n
Jazlyn Whales is a multimedia journalist based in the Christchurch newsroom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A rare nursery pod of Hector\u2019s dolphins has been spotted supporting a new mother. Photo \/ Black Cat…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":308895,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[2493,137178,617,64,63,22806,175509,21699,16495,162,154448,175506,8840,4717,175508,44853,175507,1787,175505,124700,128,137177,53381,320,319,7137,338],"class_list":["post-308894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-aid","tag-akaroa","tag-and","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-been","tag-breathe","tag-calf","tag-come","tag-dolphins","tag-harbour","tag-hectors","tag-her","tag-in","tag-learns","tag-mother","tag-nursery","tag-of","tag-pod","tag-rare","tag-science","tag-spotted","tag-supporting","tag-the","tag-to","tag-watch","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308894\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/308895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}