{"id":238283,"date":"2026-01-17T16:03:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-17T16:03:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/238283\/"},"modified":"2026-01-17T16:03:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T16:03:08","slug":"orca-surround-swimmer-on-pontoon-at-wellingtons-oriental-bay-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/238283\/","title":{"rendered":"Orca surround swimmer on pontoon at Wellington\u2019s Oriental Bay"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ycPbyrajIUrF\" style=\"display:none\">Since the start of the new year, Joel Crampton told Stuff he had fallen into a routine of heading down to the Wellington beach each evening.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ycPbyrajIUrF\" style=\"display:none\">\u201cI swam out to the pontoon, like I\u2019ve been doing most nights.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"ycPbyrajIUrF\" style=\"display:none\">Crampton told Stuff he had heard what turned out to be an orca surfacing for air.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ycPbyrajIUrF\" style=\"display:none\">He soon realised there were two of them, circling slowly around the pontoon.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ycPbyrajIUrF\" style=\"display:none\">\u201cThere was this big male with a big fin, and a female with a small fin.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"ycPbyrajIUrF\" style=\"display:none\">In a separate video, Crampton can then be seen swimming back towards shore.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ycPbyrajIUrF\" style=\"display:none\">The Department of Conservation said orcas are often seen in Wellington Harbour, particularly during spring and summer, as they hunt for stingrays.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Since the start of the new year, Joel Crampton told Stuff he had fallen into a routine of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":238284,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[1975,1561,67232,46352,19056,140541,296,78573,17467,8526,111,139,69,90,5533,140540,97689,147,140539,110848,54978,19054,15900,1316,406],"class_list":["post-238283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-at","tag-bay","tag-casual","tag-crampton","tag-encounter","tag-flanked","tag-into","tag-jawdropping","tag-joel","tag-latenight","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-on","tag-orca","tag-oriental","tag-pontoon","tag-science","tag-surround","tag-swim","tag-swimmer","tag-turned","tag-wellingtons","tag-when","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238283\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}