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Fellow diving instructor Fabian Seidel said the orca appeared as a \u201cwhite shimmer\u201d.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThese sea pandas rocked up out of bloody nowhere,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
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\u201cOne orca checked me out, looked me right in the eyes, scanned me, and fully interacted with me.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Video footage posted to social media shows the incredible moment the orca swam up within arm\u2019s reach of the divers.<\/p>\n
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Henderson, who has only worked with the diving tour operator for a few weeks, described the one-minute encounter as \u201cepic\u201d.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThey\u2019re such strong, powerful animals, but also majestic and beautiful to watch and they just came so close and they\u2019re so curious,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
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\u201cYou\u2019re so shocked that you can see and appreciate them, but then also scared because they are an apex predator.<\/p>\n
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\u201cSo it\u2019s a mix of fear and excitement because it\u2019s such a crazy experience because you\u2019re in the water with them.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Henderson said the two orca were juveniles, or younger calves which made the encounter even more surprising.<\/p>\n
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\u201cIt was insane, because they do not look small,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
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She said the orca had been hunting stingray and playing with the bubbles left by the divers as they descended 30m toward Castle Rock.<\/p>\n
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Henderson said the divers did not reach out or attempt to touch the orca, despite being within touching distance.<\/p>\n
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\u201cIt\u2019s like an organic experience, you don\u2019t want to chase them or anything,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
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Divers from the Cathedral Cove Dive and Snorkel had a once-in-a-lifetime encounter with a pod of orca last Friday. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n
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Henderson attained her Diploma in Professional Scuba Instructing last year, setting her up to work in her dream field.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI was at boarding school, I wasn\u2019t really loving it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI just wanted to do something different and I\u2019ve grown up around the water and loved being in the water so I thought dive instructing would be an amazing career path.\u201d<\/p>\n
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The Hahei resident says she loved working with Cathedral Cove Diving and Snorkel and hoped to eventually explore career opportunities overseas.<\/p>\n
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Seidel, 31, originally from Western Australia but working in New Zealand \u201cfor the season\u201d, said he had dreamed of encountering orca his whole life.<\/p>\n
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\u201cYou can\u2019t plan moments like this or buy encounters like that with any amount of money,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
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\u201cIt\u2019s so special when they choose to hang out with you, when they genuinely want to know what you are.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Fellow diving instructor Fabian Seidel said the orca appeared as a \u201cwhite shimmer\u201d. \u201cThese sea…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":243540,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[111,139,69,147,406],"class_list":{"0":"post-243539","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-new-zealand","9":"tag-newzealand","10":"tag-nz","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243539","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=243539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243539\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}