{"id":273354,"date":"2026-02-08T05:47:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-08T05:47:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/273354\/"},"modified":"2026-02-08T05:47:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-08T05:47:08","slug":"orca-spotted-at-papamoa-beach-while-new-zealand-swimmer-jono-ridler-attempts-world-record","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/273354\/","title":{"rendered":"Orca spotted at P\u0101p\u0101moa Beach while New Zealand swimmer Jono Ridler attempts world record"},"content":{"rendered":"
Ridler is attempting to swim the entire eastern coastline of the North Island in a collaboration with Live Ocean, in a bid to stop the commercial fishing practice of bottom trawling in New Zealand.<\/p>\n
Orca close to P\u0101p\u0101moa Beach on Saturday.<\/p>\n
It would be a world record for the \u201clongest unassisted staged swim ever\u201d and has included some well-known guest swimmers joining him for short stints along the way. The orca were an unexpected but welcome addition.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know we saw them from a distance, and it\u2019s a bit harder actually seeing them at sea level because you\u2019ve got a different vantage point, but I can see the big dorsal fins. Hard to miss that,\u201d Ridler said.<\/p>\n
The orca could be seen from the Swim 4 The Ocean drone, between Ridler and the shore.<\/p>\n
Orca cruising the P\u0101p\u0101moa Beach shallows. Ocean swimmer Jono Ridler and his crew can be seen in the top left of the picture. Photo \/ Live Ocean<\/p>\n
\u201cI was hoping I might be able to get a swim with them, but they were off chasing stingrays, I think, further down the shore,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The orca were filmed swimming through the waves and into the shallows of the shoreline.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think I can somewhat tick that off the list, although I have to have a closer experience some other time,\u201d Ridler, who is making his way towards East Cape, said.<\/p>\n
With more than 820km left to swim, it may not be his last encounter with the mammals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ridler is attempting to swim the entire eastern coastline of the North Island in a collaboration with Live…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":273355,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1975,50327,48052,154287,112218,7972,1558,651,16840,111656,117,111,43,139,69,11599,5533,23282,1974,111657,154286,9636,54978,6123,377,80],"class_list":["post-273354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-at","tag-attempting","tag-attempts","tag-awestruck","tag-bathers","tag-beach","tag-been","tag-close","tag-filmed","tag-jono","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-ocean","tag-orca","tag-ppmoa","tag-record","tag-ridler","tag-shallows","tag-spotted","tag-swimmer","tag-while","tag-world","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273354","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=273354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273354\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/273355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}