{"id":279957,"date":"2026-02-12T05:52:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-12T05:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/279957\/"},"modified":"2026-02-12T05:52:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-12T05:52:09","slug":"drone-footage-captures-over-30-sharks-at-mangawhai-bar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/279957\/","title":{"rendered":"Drone footage captures over 30 sharks at Mangawhai bar"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Northland wildlife photographer has captured striking drone footage of more than 30 bronze whaler sharks swimming along the Mangawhai bar. <\/p>\n

Andy Bruce of Elevated Media said he had been aware of a few sharks in his local waterway since before Christmas.<\/p>\n

“There was a massive bait ball of kahawai just outside the estuary, and they seemed to be keeping tabs on the sharks,” Bruce told 1News. <\/p>\n

On Tuesday morning, Bruce took his drone out near the Mangawhai sandbar close to the boating channel, where he filmed what he initially estimated to be about 20 sharks.<\/p>\n

\u2018Pretty amazing\u2019: Dozens of sharks spotted off Mangawhai – Watch on TVNZ+<\/a><\/p>\n

“At first, I thought it was 20 of them, then 25. Then I went a bit higher and I could see around 33 of them at the end,” he said. <\/p>\n

The footage captured the sharks swimming in shallow waters alongside the large school of kahawai, which Bruce said likely attracted them into the area.<\/p>\n

Bronze whalers are known to come close to estuaries and beaches at this time of year to breed, with Bruce saying there was a noticeable difference in size among the sharks in the group.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The bronze whaler sharks swimming just offshore Mangawhai (Source: Photography by Andy Bruce)<\/p>\n

“There was a range of big ones and little ones,” he said. “It was pretty amazing.”<\/p>\n

Bronze whalers can grow up to 3m in length, typically averaging between 1.5m and 2.5m.<\/p>\n

Bruce, who has lived in Mangawhai for five years, said sharks appeared “all the time” in the waters, with one local ocean swimming group fondly nicknaming a resident shark Felicity. <\/p>\n

He said despite regularly photographing marine life in the area, including orca and dolphins, he had never seen bronze whalers in such large numbers. <\/p>\n

“There\u2019s always the extremes of the reaction to sharks \u2013 people being scared and then people seeing the beauty of it,” Bruce said.<\/p>\n

He said he hoped the images would help people see the animals differently.<\/p>\n

“Sharks have got a bad name. I’d be happy to jump in with them to make people realise they’re not that bad,” he said.<\/p>\n

“It\u2019s wonderful we get to have these amazing experiences with nature so close to shore.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Northland wildlife photographer has captured striking drone footage of more than 30 bronze whaler sharks swimming along…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":279958,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[50,111,139,1067,69,147,406],"class_list":{"0":"post-279957","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-animals","9":"tag-new-zealand","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-northland","12":"tag-nz","13":"tag-science","14":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279957","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=279957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}