{"id":349640,"date":"2026-03-27T00:05:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T00:05:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/349640\/"},"modified":"2026-03-27T00:05:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T00:05:08","slug":"whanganui-fishermen-surrounded-by-playful-common-dolphins-off-kai-iwi-coast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/349640\/","title":{"rendered":"Whanganui fishermen surrounded by playful common dolphins off Kai Iwi coast"},"content":{"rendered":"

The pod swam alongside the bottom of their boat for five to 10 minutes, Simon said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd the further we cruised out, the more that showed up and they were just coming towards us.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was pretty cool.\u201d<\/p>\n

Simon posted a video of the encounter on Facebook.<\/p>\n

New Zealand Whale and Dolphin trustee and professor emeritus at the University of Otago Liz Slooten said they were common dolphins (Delphinus delphis) based on the video.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have this kind of hourglass pattern on the side of them where the front part can look quite yellow, fawn or yellow coloured.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd the rear part of the hourglass is usually more grey.\u201d<\/p>\n

Common dolphins are located almost worldwide. <\/p>\n

They tend to live in deeper water offshore and can be found in large schools as big as thousands, \u201cwhich is a really impressive thing to see\u201d.<\/p>\n

They have a more pointed, \u201cshark-like\u201d dorsal fin as opposed to the rounded dorsal fins found on New Zealand\u2019s endangered M\u0101ui and Hector\u2019s dolphins<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The dolphins were likely curious about the boat, Slooten said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are just very playful.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a little bit like a dog chasing a stick or a ball.\u201d<\/p>\n

Common dolphins are a faster-swimming species of dolphins, easily keeping up with a boat going 10 knots.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re just a beautiful animal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Simon said he had been fishing in Whanganui since he was young and this was not the first time he had seen dolphins in the area.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlways a fun surprise.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was the first time I\u2019d seen that many.\u201d<\/p>\n

The three friends enjoyed their unexpected visitors and caught a few fish.<\/p>\n

\u201cPerfect conditions to be out on the water,\u201d Simon said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wouldn\u2019t be surprised if the dolphins caught more than us though.\u201d<\/p>\n

Erin Smith is a multimedia journalist based in Whanganui.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The pod swam alongside the bottom of their boat for five to 10 minutes, Simon said. \u201cAnd the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":349641,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[33846,18247,3595,11586,8344,33224,54250,71,209,50521,141,111,139,69,6662,85934,147,88,38694,9863,1883,6123,406],"class_list":["post-349640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-along","tag-boating","tag-by","tag-coast","tag-common","tag-dolphins","tag-fishermen","tag-from","tag-group","tag-iwi","tag-kai","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-off","tag-playful","tag-science","tag-surprise","tag-surrounded","tag-visit","tag-whanganui","tag-while","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349640","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=349640"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349640\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/349641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=349640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=349640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=349640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}