Whales came close enough to shore at Long Beach near Dunedin for an onlooker to hear the sound of them crashing back into the water.<\/p>\n
At least one of the pair of pelagic mammals photographed by the Otago Daily Times yesterday appeared to be a southern right whale, Department of Conservation marine species technical adviser Hannah Hendricks said.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018This species often come very close to shore, but are not at risk of stranding, so it\u2019s a perfect opportunity to enjoy connecting with the awe of nature from a safe distance,\u2019\u2019 she said.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018We expect to see these whales around our southern coastlines at this time of year as they come closer to shore, whereas in summer months they go offshore to feed.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
Most southern right whales spent winter in the subantarctic, but a few would make the journey further north and visit New Zealand\u2019s mainland, Ms Hendricks said.<\/p>\n
Historically, they would have been much more present in harbours around the country, she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Whales came close enough to shore at Long Beach near Dunedin for an onlooker to hear the sound…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":535691,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[111,139,69,147,406],"class_list":["post-535690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535690","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=535690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535690\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/535691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=535690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=535690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=535690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}